I have been on Twitter for almost three years now and during that time I have tried many different ways of using it. The progression so far has explored how I moved from blogging to tweeting, seeing the impact of the realtime nature on news, being overwhelmed by the flow of information that lead to the great unfollow, trying to figure out how to pull interesting pieces from the collective consciousness, and more recently how to follow events using Twitter and how realtime many-to-many conversation can lead to more exciting and emergent event formats. It’s time for the next iteration. 

I have been playing with the idea of mobs ever since I was chatting about the structure with @NickHac last year at an impromptu #stub event. What defines a mob is that it comes together for a purpose, doesn’t have a leader, and disperses once the purpose has been satisfied. Nick listed the original #stub tweet but then it was out of his hands to the degree that even if he himself didn’t show up, the mob still would have been there. Once the mob is created, it is hard to disband while the purpose is still current. 

This idea of mob mentality is what I have been applying to my twitter usage recently. I follow a core group of maybe 40 people who are those that I see in person every few days, ‘friends’ if you like. From there though I plug in (and out) of various themes or topics as they are relevant or interesting. You would have seen a number of people complaining that Twitter is a waste of time and there is just nothing relevant to them, but I would challenge that and suggest that if you are following irrelevant people then they will send you irrelevant messages. If on the other hand though you follow people who are very closely aligned to your current interests then the stream can be an amazing thing. 

At Future Summit 2009 last week I was part of a mob of 10 Twitterati who came together for the purpose of sharing the event with the wider web community. The week before the event I followed all of them and anyone else who had mentioned the event. During the event it was really useful because I could see what everyone else was thinking and doing – where we were having pre-event beers etc. Then for a few days afterwards I could see what all those guys were doing as well as any residual comments they had from the two days. I got to Friday a few days later and I was losing interest in those messages – I was curious though what was happening in Brisbane because I had decided to spend a few days there around the #hivebris event. The next logical step was to unfollow the Future Summit mob and plug into the Brisbane community for a while. 

I thought about who I knew in Brisbane and immediately followed the 15-20 people whose names popped into my head, and then I ran a search for “brisbane” and followed anyone who seemed interesting in the first 20 pages of results. I ended up with a mob of around 60, and having just returned I can say that it was a hugely useful process because my Twitter stream was so hugely relevant during that time. 50% of the tweets I saw were about things that were happening locally – good cafes and bars, events, meetups, transport updates, news, it was great! I knew however that as soon as I stepped off my Public Jet back in Melbourne, it was game over. Time to unplug and readjust. 

There have been a few minor drawbacks to using this system but I think it is worth it overall. Because I’m not following thousands of people they can’t all DM me and that sometimes leads to some frustration, despite the fact that I only promote my email address and contact details - my DMs and emails both end up in the same inbox! Others will ask why I don’t just use groups in a program like Tweetdeck – and the response is that 50% of my twitter use is through my iPhone and following seems to be the best way to maintain groups there. I could probably set up a private account but I have private conversations in private, in other channels – so that seems pointless. Then there are the few who consider it to be gaming the system for followers – but that’s not the case and I hope people will unfollow me as well if I’m not relevant to them. I guess the final reason is that I’m trying to battle the information overload and following less people sure makes that easier! 

Right now I’m wondering which topic I should plug into next. Maybe “Melbourne”, maybe swine flu / spread of epidemics, maybe people who get things done., maybe spiral dynamics integral, perhaps some more on flow?  What do you think? Do you have any suggestions?

By Ross Hill - May 28th, 2009 at 12:35am with 1,628 views - nick hac twitter