Archive for the 'Twitter' category

Oct. 9, #FollowFriday

Oct 09 2009 Published by under FollowFriday, Twitter

I had the good fortune of going to Bruce Springsteen’s second-to-last concert at Giants Stadium last night, thanks to a friend with an extra ticket. We had great seats, and I posted photos from each song to my Posterous – as well as a few extra pics.

My Posterous tweets all new posts, so I ended up having some cool conversations with other fans before, during and after the concert, so I thought I’d suggest some folks for today’s Follow Friday whom I’ve been talking to on Twitter – some for a few weeks now, some I just “met” last night.

As always, please make any suggestions for other people to follow in the comments.

@hypenoticbam: I have to start with Barry Martin, because it turns out that Springsteen was playing over the loudspeakers in the hospital when both his first and second children were born. And he lives in Canada, not New Jersey. Thunder Road was playing when he was there for his first daughter’s birth, and 10th Avenue Freeze-Out when his second was. Needless to say, he’s a big fan.

@Kcecelia: Katherine James and I have been conversing on Twitter for a few weeks now, and I’m please to say that I have her looking at bacon in a whole new light. She’s fun to talk to and very cool. She likes Bruce, but much like me (and many, many others), Clarence Clemons is her favorite. He was awesome and got huge cheers every time he was shown on the big screens, by the way.

@paulzink: Paul Zink and I have been chatting on and off a lot, and after I tweeted out a photo of me and my friend Laura last night, he sent me a link to a photo of a friend of his, who looks remarkably like me. Surreal. Paul tweets about all kinds of stuff and is always up for a conversation.

@laurenhard: This was Lauren Hard’s first Bruce concert (was only my second) and she now understands how people can get obsessed. It’s true, the man plays 3 hours, NON-stop. Lauren’s a Philadelphia blogger/journalist and I just “met” her last night. Caution: If you dislike the Phillies, you might not want to follow her.

@stephensurefire: Stephen lives in Austin, Texas, where they know a bit about good music. Plus, he’s a music business manager, so he tweets a bit about music and musicians. He expressed jealousy at my going to the concert, but he’s going to see Bruce in November, so it’s all good.

That’s it for this week.

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Oct. 2, #FollowFriday

Oct 02 2009 Published by under FollowFriday, Twitter

One of the nice things about having worked at newspapers for so long and now being involved in social media is that I’ve gotten to know lots of cool people over the years, among them some very talented photographers.

I thought I’d share some of those folks with you for my Follow Friday this week.

@jessewright: I’ve never met Jesse. In fact, I’ve not had much communication with him at all. But when I went to the MediaBistro Circus conference in May, slides of his work was projected onto a screen between panels and during breaks. Fortunately, his Twitter handle was listed on one slide, so I was able to add him right there and then. New York-based, he takes lots of shots of the city I love, but with the eye of a native. He doesn’t tweet a lot, but often sends out links to new shots on Flickr and when I catch them, I usually RT them. Check out his work.

@Rickdeliaphoto: When I started at the newspaper in Arizona, Rick was a contract freelancer for the photo department and I always enjoyed going out on assignments with him. We’d gotten back in touch via LinkedIn a couple years ago, and then when I was in Italy earlier this year, randomly ended up speaking with a woman who knew him. Small World Story #527. He has an impressive portfolio, having spent a year in Uganda documenting the war there, as well as the work of some NGOs in the country.

@FitzgeraldPhoto: Brian was another freelancer for the paper I worked for in Arizona. Since that time, he’s worked all over the place and currently lives in Maine. He also has gotten out of the fulltime newspaper business (shocking, I know). I was just looking through his website and, man, does he have some nice stuff on there. A stand-up guy, he’s done a little of everything in the photography world and has a fabulous portfolio.

@MaggieSoladay: I met Maggie a month ago at the Mashable Social Good Conference, but she’s one of those rare people you meet and can feel as if you’ve known for years. She’s in India right now, documenting the cool work of the nonprofit she’s part of, @SalaamGarage. She’s in India right now, but is coming back home in the next couple of days. Her photography is beautiful, but her spirit even more so.

@Jonathan360: I got to know Jon through Digg, of all places, though he’s not very active there anymore. I love looking at his online portfolio, which ranges from fashion shoots to portraits of Mexican wrestlers. You can find him on Twitter quite a bit, and you may already be following him – you and 71,000 other people (he started using this long before a lot of us). Check him out.

That’s it for my recommendations this week. As usual, please leave any recommendations in the comments section. I love finding cool new people to follow.

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Sept. 18, #FollowFriday

Sep 18 2009 Published by under FollowFriday, Twitter

Past lives.

Many of us have had what seems like multiple lives – so many different workplaces that we know people from all over the place, many of whom we’ve reconnected with here on Twitter.

I’ve had a few folks get in touch lately via Twitter whom I hadn’t seen or heard from in what seems like eons. Maybe we’d reconnected a little via Facebook, but Twitter is even more immediate. So I thought I’d take the opportunity to introduce some people from my old lives.

The teenage years:
@Flyssy: I was a camper and then worked at an arts  camp in New Milford, Conn., for three summers. Naturally, I worked in the Publications shop, writing poetry and publishing literary arts magazines and camp yearbooks. I learned how to do every job there, from typesetting to printing, and Marko was one of the growed-up counselors who was wicked on an offset press. His hair was verrry 1980s Britain at the time. Now, he runs a guitar collecting website and does all sorts of cool stuff online. And his hair’s much shorter and less shaggy now.

Freshman year of college:
@JamieDicken: I lived in a co-ed dorm, but on the first floor, which was the only floor where the boys and girls were totally separated because of the lobby and common room. The girls’ section was called, creatively, the Virgin Vault (better than the boys, I think, as it was the Mole Hole). We became a rather tight bunch, as we were sort of locked into a two-hallway area and didn’t have to worry about boys coming along and seeing us in various states of disarray, I suppose. Jamie lived around the corner and we took more than one journalism class together. Heck, if it weren’t for her, I probably wouldn’t have had the good fortune to get into Eric Zorn‘s Basic Writing Lab, and my life would probably suck right now. Thanks, Jamie!

Working at The Miami Herald:
@BeckyandHollee: Becky and Hollee both went to Northwestern, my alma mater, but are … younger than I am. That’s all I’m gonna say about that, but I met them because of their internships at The Miami Herald when I was a reporter there. Being a grad, I always welcomed the NU interns and usually became friends with them because, after all, they weren’t THAT much younger than me. And I was old and wise and in my 20s, after all. Hollee used to hang with me and some of my friends, too. Now they’re both all growed up and moms and journalists and professors and are even writing a book together. Dayum.

The Arizona years:
@Tony_Blei_Photo: I worked for a paper outside of Phoenix that has had more ownership changes than Madonna has clothing changes at an average concert. Like many newspapers, it’s had money issues in the past few years and has all but fallen apart, which is a shame. It wasn’t the biggest paper, but it sure was the scrappiest. We consistently beat the Arizona Republic on stories and had lots of fun doing it. And the photo staff was really top-notch. Tony was one of the photographers there, and was also a good copy editor and writer.

My final days of newspaper journalism:
@DavidSchepp: David and I worked in the same office for most of my final 8 years in a newspaper newsroom. He was a business reporter, I was metro editor. We wrote, we blogged, we participated in the office Secret Santa. Our office rocked; we had a good time there, even when it seemed as if the world around us was totally crazy (because it was – and so was our office, honestly). Now he’s blogging for Daily Finance and some other sites and we keep an eye out for whom among our friends is being laid off next, as well as the decimation of our former newsroom.

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Sept. 4, #FollowFriday

Sep 04 2009 Published by under FollowFriday, Twitter

In honor of International Bacon Day tomorrow, I thought I would dedicate today’s Follow Friday to some of the important Bacon-related accounts on Twitter.

by malloc_flickr

by malloc_flickr

Some people have noticed the phrase “Bacon queen” in my Twitter bio and have asked me about it. Some have even challenged me on it. In the end, they all back down. I do not claim to be the world’s best cook of bacon. I do not claim to love it more than anyone else in the entire world. I do not claim to be the first person ever to express a love of bacon online.

I do, however, claim the crown of bacon queen that many have chosen to bestow on me and I take that honor quite seriously.

So seriously, in fact, that friends I’ve known for decades, since long before this crazy set of tubes called the Internet was ubiquitous, send me links about bacon. A vegan friend brought me vegan bacon as a gift. I get e-mails all the time from people I’ve known at various points in my life, in various cities, saying, “What’s up with the bacon?”

I have become synonymous with bacon, and I take that seriously (I’m the third-highest Twitter account under bacon in WeFollow and seriously contending for No. 2). Bacon is not to be trifled with.

So I’d been thinking about doing a bacon-focused Follow Friday for a little while now, and when I realized tomorrow, Sept. 5, was International Bacon Day (the Saturday before Labor Day in the U.S.), I knew it was an idea whose time had come.

I only do five recommendations each week in my #FollowFriday posts, and I will not do differently this week. So I’m not going to get everyone.

But if there’s anyone you believe I have egregiously left out, please let me know in the comments.

@BaconFeed: This is really THE must-follow of all bacon-related Twitter accounts. It seems out all bacon-related tweets and retweets them, so even if someone who rarely mentions bacon has something to say, you don’t have to miss it.

@BaconFestChi: Chicago is one of my favorite cities and bacon one of my favorite foods. There’s a bacon fest in Chicago? How did I not know this before? I have to see if I can get plane tickets for Oct. 25. Can anyone put me up in the Windy City?

@BaconDevil: All you need to know is in his bio: “You know you want me, don’t fight it. It will just make things awkward. Mmmmm bacon!” Definitely click on the URL provided, too. And though this is cheating (I did say I would only do 5 recs), it’s hard to mention BaconDevil without mentioning his relatives, though they haven’t been tweeting as much lately: @BaconJesus and @BaconMoses.

@BaconHaikus: Bacon-worship in haiku format. What’s not to love? Now, the site and Twitter account have been rather … quiet lately. But I hope that my FollowFriday love helps spark some new activity. I mean, Here’s the most recent one on the site:

Run you tasty swine!
It doesn’t matter who wins
You’re all delicious

• @FatKidsClub: I have to give a tip of the hat to the Fat Kids Club because they’re the ones who reminded me of tomorrow’s festivities. I would be severely lacking if I did not recognize them for their kindness.

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Aug. 28, #FollowFriday

Aug 28 2009 Published by under FollowFriday, Twitter

I thought I’d do kind of a different Follow Friday this week, inasmuch as I don’t actually know the people behind any of these accounts.

But there are some very funny people on Twitter and they’re making me laugh out loud in 14 characters or less.

The idea for this week’s theme of frakkin’ funny Twitterers came about when my husband showed me the first one on the list below. After sharing that account with many others, I thought I’d see what other accounts out there were laugh-out-loud funny. I got recommendations from iamwritebrained, mikafilm, TomChivers, cougarclaws, kalichan, annaliseb and Twisty58 (sorry if I missed listing anyone here).

Got lots of good recommendations, but I stick to just five a week, and didn’t want to make an exception just because these folks are funny.

So, let’s start, first with the one that started the idea for doing funny people this week:

Continue Reading »

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Aug. 26, college faculty are using Twitter

Aug 26 2009 Published by under Hot Hardware, Twitter

Though most of them still don’t, a growing number of college faculty and staff members are using Twitter, both in and out of class. Read about the study on Hot Hardware.

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Aug. 21, #FollowFriday

Aug 21 2009 Published by under FollowFriday, Twitter

I’ve had a lot of fun doing my themed #FollowFriday posts the last few weeks, so I thought I’d do some of my green friends. I apparently know too many, though, so I might do more next week. Damn hippies. ;-)

Fortunately, I already did @socialpyramid a few weeks ago, so that made it a little easier to narrow my list down to five for this week.

@greenbiztweets: Hugh Byrne is a great guy. Knows his stuff and comes at the whole environmental news thing from an interesting angle – business. It’s an important topic, too, because industry, as a whole, isn’t going to find being green to be a priority until it makes sense for their bottom line. Interesting tweets, diggs, stumbles, the whole shebang.

@stephhicks: Steph is an environmental lawyer who now manages five blogs (is that all? C’mon, Steph, you can do better than that!), takes care of her passel of kidlets and still finds time to run. And cook. Stop it, Steph, you’re making the rest of us look bad. I keep an eye out for her tweets, because I always know I’ll find something interesting about environmental issues.

@jerryjamesstone: Jerry blogs here, there and everywhere, including a site called TreeHugger.com. And he lives in San Francisco. I think all that means he’s legally required to hover 3 inches above the grass when he walks, so he doesn’t kill even a single blade. If you follow him, you’ll find cool green stuff, plus some really odd, news of the weird-type things he’s come across.

@thewordisberry: Sara Ost is one cool mama. Editor-in-chief of ecosalon.com, she’s a sassy little frassy (OK, I cribbed that from her Twitter bio, and admit that I have only a vague idea what that means, but it sounds great). Her tweets are imbued with a wry humor while still managing to be informative. For example, did you know that mascara could smell like crushed aspirin tastes? Me neither.

@derekmarkham: I pretty much know when I see Derek’s avatar in my Twitter stream that it’s going to be a tidbit about the environment, a retweet of someone else’s tweet about the environment or some cool photos relating to the environment. He can also tweet one-handed, which can be quite difficult.

As usual, if you have any suggestions for folks I should be following, please tell me your recommendations in the comments below. Thanks!

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Aug. 14: #FollowFriday

Aug 14 2009 Published by under Burbia, Environmental Graffiti, FollowFriday, io9, Lemondrop, Popular Mechanics, Twitter

For my seventh week of Twitter #FollowFriday recommendations, I thought I’d give a nod to some of my favorite websites on Twitter. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it focuses on sites where I’ve gotten to know writers and editors, which is very cool, because they’re sites I truly admire.

For the uninitiated, I do my #FollowFriday this way because it doesn’t clutter up the Twitter stream too much and I get to explain why I think you should follow folks. I do five recs each week.

I’m always looking for more interesting people to add on Twitter, so please recommend at least one person in the comments. Would love to hear who you think is worth my time to follow.

So here’s this week’s #FollowFriday recs:

• io9: Every sci-fi geek who’s not familiar with this site should re-examine his or her sci-fi geek credentials. I love this site, because it mixes an excellent amount of original writing, reviewing and listing with pickups of the best and most important sci-fi news out there – and gives credit where credit’s due. Plus, when they did their “10 Mall Massacres With Robots, Freaks and Monsters” post, I noticed they had left out a classic of the genre – Night of the Comet. When I left a comment to that effect, they not only added it in, but also gave me credit for suggesting it. That’s class.

• PopMech: Yes, Popular Mechanics, the old-school magazine, has a killer website. All Lost fans know to go there the next day for the breakdown on whatever insane brain-twisting scientific concept they’ve thrown at us. They do lots of killer articles on the latest gadgets, science news and, frankly, cool stuff. Such as: A kit that turns any car into an autonomous robot. What???

• EnviroGraffiti: The bio on Environmental Graffiti’s Twitter page says “For environmentalists who don’t take themselves too seriously.” Good description. They post lots of environmentally focused stuff, but also just interesting things in culture and nature. Like this: Amsterdam from Above. I mean, is that cool or what? But even more than that, site founder Chris Ingham Brooke is just a stand-up guy. Very cool, very nice, very smart.

• BurbiaCentral: Many of you already know that I write for Burbia – funny (hopefully) personal essays on whatever strikes my fancy. But the site has lots of good writers and tons of funny content. Definitely a taste for the bizarre and funny. You may have been following the saga of the lawn chair war there? This site’s for everyone who knows that living in the suburbs doesn’t mean you escape the craziness of the city.

• LemondropTweets: LemonDrop.com is a really fun website, where girls like me blog on whatever’s going on. They’re pretty much girl geeks, just like me. And they even have a halfway decent following among the guys, too, mostly of the geek variety. Witness this letter from a fan. Can you feel the love?

Anyway, that’s it for this week’s #FollowFriday recs. Again, please leave your recommendations in the comments for this post; I’d love to hear who you think I should be following.

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Aug. 7, #FollowFriday

Aug 07 2009 Published by under FollowFriday, Twitter

For my sixth week of Twitter #FollowFriday recommendations, I thought I’d take a cue from a former college classmate of mine and give you five Northwestern University recommendations.

I graduated from NU in 1991 and have had the good fortune to not only keep in touch with many of my fellow graduates, but also run into lots of others over the years. And they’re not even all Medill grads (the journalism school).

It’s also sort of in honor of John Hughes, who died yesterday. He filmed lots of his movies in the Chicago suburbs and was a cinematic hero to my generation for such gems as Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink. Every Northwestern student could recognize several locations in every one of his movies.

For the uninitiated, I do my #FollowFriday this way because it doesn’t clutter up the Twitter stream too much and I get to explain why I think you should follow folks. I do five recs each week.

I’m always looking for more interesting people to add on Twitter, so please recommend at least one person in the comments. Would love to hear who you think is worth my time to follow.

So here’s this week’s #FollowFriday recs:

• @johnjedwards3: John’s the one I referred to in my first paragraph; he did an NU-themed #FF a few weeks back and I rediscovered some folks I’d gone to school with but didn’t know were on Twitter. John’s scary smart, has worked for the Wall Street Journal for years as a reporter and editor and has a very dry sense of humor (check out his bio). John was a couple years behind me at NU.

• @moryan: Maureen Ryan is the TV critic for the Chicago Tribune and had some of the best interviews with the cast and crew of Battlestar Galactica during its run. She tweets out links to her reviews and interviews, and interacts a lot with her followers. She’s also somewhat of a sci-fi geek. I didn’t know Maureen in college, but I wasn’t surprised (was rather pleased, actually) when I found out she was a grad.

• @sizzlemaker: Shari Weiss just graduated from Medill this spring and I actually met her on Twitter. She has an outsized affection for teen soaps (90210, Everwood, etc.) and is currently interning at the Chicago Tribune. If they know what’s what, they’ll hire her fulltime. She also runs the blog TeenDramaWhore and is in charge of Breaking Tweets’ entertainment tweets.

• @toddpruzan: Todd Pruzan and I were at Northwestern at the same time. Both in the J-school. Knew a lot of the same people. Never knew each other or even heard each other’s names until running into one another at AOL recently. Todd is an editor for Daily Finance and WalletPop. And likes his rice cooker. He does, however, see the uselessness of the diaper genie. Oh, and he recently moved to Jersey. Hahahahaha! (Full disclosure: I live in Jersey.)

• @stephaniemehta: Stephanie N. Mehta and I were roommates in college for two years and her family was like my second family for four years at Northwestern. She once spackled over a hole in the wall that I … um … caused. She has always been one step ahead of me in finding cool music and I tape-recorded every single one of her CDs before we graduated on her boom box (if the RIAA is reading this, I’m just kidding). She’s now Technology Editor for Fortune magazine and doesn’t tweet nearly enough. I’m thinking that if more people start following her, maybe she’ll break out the TwitterBerry more. Hmmm, Steph?

Anyhow, that’s it for the week.

Please let me know your recommendations in the comments!

One response so far

July 31, #FollowFriday

Jul 31 2009 Published by under FollowFriday, Twitter

Welcome to my fifth week of listing my Twitter Follow Friday recommendations here on my blog.

I like it because it doesn’t clutter up the Twitter stream too much and I get to explain why I think you should follow them. I do five recs a week, and have plenty of folks still to get to. I’m fortunate to know some very cool people.

That said, I’m always looking for more, interesting people to add on Twitter, so please recommend at least one person in the comments. Would love to hear who you think is worth my time to follow.

So here’s this week’s #FollowFriday recs:

@Gamebittk: I would be highly remiss if I did not recommend Mike. I’ve known him for quite some time on Digg and this week, he came up with a brilliant solution to the whole Diggbar madness (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, thank your lucky stars, or read this post). He came up with ShareTool, yes, another URL shortener. But not only does it allow for tweeting and all sorts of sharing, it enables Digg users to send their URLs with a Digg button at the top for their Digg friends, but directly to the content of the article for their non-Digg friends. Can’t we just all get along? By the way, if you want a good laugh, put the ShareTool URL into ShareTool and share it. Really. Do it.

@DianaCostello: Diana harkens back to my old life (a whopping seven months ago) as a professional journalist. I was a newspaper editor, and Diana was one of my reporters. She was always trying to find new ways to get people to come to the website by – gasp! – giving them something they couldn’t get anywhere else. She works her butt off, has a wicked sense of humor and actually cares about the quality of what she does. She also has an incredibly eclectic taste in music, maybe even rivaling that of @Surferess. OK, not quite, but she comes close.

@Primatage: Matt Rogers is a relatively new friend. He’s funny, sharp and really obnoxious. Exactly what I look for in a friend. He shares good links, writes an interesting blog and has a nice eye for graphic design. Check him out.

@PinkPackRat: Roberta is a fellow New Jersey-dweller and, despite the fact that she likes pink, is very cool. She has a fun soapbox blog that touches on subjects ranging to the fact that chubby people like me live longer to the local farm stand that runs on the honor system. OK, you may have guessed from that last part that she doesn’t live anywhere near Newark. She lives in the rural part of Jersey. (Hey, it’s not call the Garden State for no reason.)

@StuartFoster: Stu’s one of my old-timey Digg friends, too. He has a social media blog and has been my sometime collaborator on blog posts there (our most famous was the Beards + Social Media = Win post). He’s a hard worker and shares lots of good links on Twitter.

So that’s my five recommendations for #FollowFriday this week. Who do you recommend? Please tell me in the comments.

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