Tiny Gigantic

It’s a simple 4-step process:

Before you start, make sure your profile is not set to private. You want people to feel like you are open to conversation and connection.

Step 1: Define the conversation you want to have
What kind of like-minded conversation do you want? What purpose do you want the conversation to serve? And what subjects do you want the conversation to focus on? These questions are crucial, because they will help you navigate and filter the chatter of Twitter’s millions of users.

Step 2: Write a relevant bio
Your bio should tell people what you are interested in talking about. If the 140 characters is not enough to cover the full range of interests you want to talk about on Twitter, create your own custom profile background image which includes a broader description of your interests.

Step 3: Find and follow like-minded people
You probably have some leads—some friends or bloggers who are likely to be tweeting about relevant stuff. Find them and follow them. Then take a look at the people they converse with (the people they follow, and the people who follow them), and more importantly, take a look at what those people are posting. If you like their feeds, follow them. Keep exploring and adding relevant people.

If you don’t have any leads, then go to the Twitter search page and type in some keywords related to your ideal conversation topics. Find the people who are posting about that subject matter, review their feeds, and follow them if they interest you. Then, as above, take a look at the people they converse with (the people they follow, and the people who follow them). If you like their feeds, follow them.

Step 4: Post relevant, retweetable stuff
You’ll find that many of the people you follow will follow you back for no particular reason, but you can encourage a more robust and relevant following if you post stuff that matters to the people that matter to you. And if your posts are really interesting, people will retweet your posts, often giving you credit for your work. Your name will go out in their post, and it will reach their whole group of followers. Some of those will check you out, and some will even follow you.

That’s it. You can repeat steps 3 and 4 over and over, and your community will grow in size and value.

Twitter. It’s something I’ve been avoiding for the past months. I’ve even had moments of wanting it to fail a little because the idea just kinda bugged. Who the fuck cares about status updates?

But recently, I realized it’s not about status updates. It’s not, as the Facebook prompt suggests, about what I’m “doing right now.” And it’s not, as the LinkedIn prompt suggests, about what I’m “working on right now.”

Twitter is a whole new kind of human communication—a one-to-many conversation—that enables a whole new kind of community. Here’s a nice summary (from Deep Jive Interests):

It’s because I can listen and participate, in real time, with a giant chat room full off interesting people, who at any given time, are thinking out loud, reporting on things they find important, but doing so in a fairly terse and concise way; and, who are almost always reachable and generally approachable about answering any particular question you might have.

This is a big fucking deal. I know because I’ve recently been lamenting the fact that my areas of interest are unusual and my fellow weirdos often live in other cities. Sure, we all have blogs and delicious accounts, and lots of us are on Facebook or Linkedin. We all use email, text, and chat. Nonetheless, we do not have community and we don’t really have a running conversation. Twitter looks like it’s gonna change that.

Now I want to show you another interesting tidbit, the Five Stages of Twitter Acceptance (from the Influential Marketing Blog):

1. Denial
“I think Twitter sounds stupid. Why would anyone care what people are doing right now?”

2. Presence
“I don’t get it, but I guess I should at least create an account.”

3. Dumping
“I use Twitter to send people links to my blog posts and to send people my press releases.”

4. Conversing
“I don’t always post useful stuff, but I am using Twitter to have authentic 1×1 conversations.”

5. Microblogging
“I use Twitter to post useful stuff that people read, and I’m having authentic 1×1 conversations.”

Lastly, some recently released stats, and a business-case anecdote (via LitmanLive):

* 70% of users joined in 2008.
* 20% have joined in the last 60 days.
* An estimated 5-10,000 new accounts are opening every day.
* The average user has been on Twitter for 275 days.
* 80% of users have a bio on their profile. (I personally don’t follow users without a bio)
* 62% have a photo on their profile.
* Traffic has grown 600% over the last 12 months.
* Total user numbers are between 4-5m with approx 30% unengaged.

(Sources Hubspot and Compete)

It’s not there yet, but it’s getting towards reaching the tipping point. It has potential for business also, success stories are starting to emerge from well known brands who are establishing a presence and engaging with their audience. Perhaps most famously, Dell recently reported that they have made more than $1 million dollars through their DellOutlet Twitter account. It’s clear that there’s value to be had from many angles.

My point: I think Twitter is here in a big way. I think it’s not a matter of adoption, but acceptance. I think it’s a matter of a learning curve (the one-to-many conversation is new to everyone, and we’ll get better), and I think it’s a matter of the hockey-stick curve we see when the network effect kicks in, which is gonna happen real soon.

With that, I’ll sign off and invite you to connect with me on Twitter.

Memetics expert Susan Blackmore introduces the idea of “third replicators.”

I’m serious. Santa’s been forwarding the letters she sent him. She promised to be extra nice, and even suggested she’d be willing to get naughty with him if he came through.

Before you get offended, let me be clear: I’m not tryna besmirch your aunt’s reputation. It’s just that she’s got a burning desire, and frankly I think it’s a natural and healthy response to a book as fine as Written on the City. So give the lady what she wants, and while you’re at it, get one for your sexy cousin too.

Apparently, the LA Times editor Russ Stanton has said that the newspaper’s online revenue now exceeds its editorial payroll costs. In other words, it’s in a position to free itself from printing presses and delivery trucks. This is an industry first, and a big fucking deal. I feel like we just broke the sound barrier.

Check out Jeff Jarvis’ thoughts on this over at BuzzMachine.

Back in May we posted about the Peace Billboards project. That project took place only in San Francisco, but now there’s a chance it can cross the country. Just imagine: 180 visualizations of what peace looks like, from 180 artists from 180 countries. And the coolest part is that it’s up for vote at Change.org, Obama’s super fucking brilliant social network for change. If it gets enough votes the project will get put in front of Obama himself for even more (possibly official) support!

Go vote now and spread the word to everyone you know.

I just got a print of 60 noses made by Shawn Feeney, and it’s dope! Shawn worked as a police sketch artist for two years, and these noses are based on actual arrest pictures. From upper left to bottom right, they go female/male/female/male, and they go from young to old.

I recommend hanging it in your bathroom or any suitably smelly place. And it makes a great gift!

Endossa is a creativity store in Sao Paulo. This fits into the hybrid creative studio/agency model we’ve been talking about over the last few days.Scott Burnham describes it better than I can:

Endossa is a collaborative store which caters to craftspeople, designers, independent musicians, inventors, foodmakers, and a wide cross-section of creatives “who devote their time to tactile ideas and need assistance to ‘publish’ them.” The principles of Endossa are as follows:

* Rent empty shelf boxes to every micro-entrepreneur who wants some space to sell products, without asking for sales commission.
* Any product can be sold in Endossa from bottles of chilies to handmade notebooks and its time on the shelf depends on demand: high sales means high visibility.
* Create a micro-community of young entrepreneurs and curious people who visit Endossa to get fresh inspiration from the creative pieces inside the store.

Super awesome.

Bruce Sterling has been voicing some seriously provocative ideas about how our culture might shift its relationship to objects to better navigate through space and time.

For an appetizer, check out his paean to the Leatherman in The Atlantic this month.

For a bigger, deeper discussion, check out The Last Viridian Note, which is so good I have to post a teaser here:

In earlier, less technically advanced eras … material goods were inherently difficult to produce, find, and ship. They were rare and precious. They were closely associated with social prestige. Without important material signifiers such as wedding china, family silver, portraits, a coach-house, a trousseau and so forth, you were advertising your lack of substance to your neighbors. If you failed to surround yourself with a thick material barrier, you were inviting social abuse and possible police suspicion. So it made pragmatic sense to cling to heirlooms, renew all major purchases promptly, and visibly keep up with the Joneses.

That era is dying. It’s not only dying, but the assumptions behind that form of material culture are very dangerous. These objects can no longer protect you from want, from humiliation — in fact they are *causes* of humiliation, as anyone with a McMansion crammed with Chinese-made goods and an unsellable SUV has now learned at great cost.

Furthermore, many of these objects can damage you personally. The hours you waste stumbling over your piled debris, picking, washing, storing, re-storing, those are hours and spaces that you will never get back in a mortal lifetime. Basically, you have to curate these goods: heat them, cool them, protect them from humidity and vermin. Every moment you devote to them is lost to your children, your friends, your society, yourself.

It’s not bad to own fine things that you like. What you need are things that you GENUINELY like. Things that you cherish, that enhance your existence in the world. The rest is dross.

Do not “economize.” Please. That is not the point. The economy is clearly insane. Even its champions are terrified by it now. It’s melting the North Pole. So “economization” is not your friend. Cheapness can be value-less. Voluntary simplicity is, furthermore, boring. Less can become too much work.

The items that you use incessantly, the items you employ every day, the normal, boring goods that don’t seem luxurious or romantic: these are the critical ones. They are truly central. The everyday object is the monarch of all objects. It’s in your time most, it’s in your space most. It is “where it is at,” and it is “what is going on.”

It takes a while to get this through your head, because it’s the opposite of the legendry of shopping. However: the things that you use every day should be the best-designed things you can get. For instance, you cannot possibly spend too much money on a bed — (assuming you have a regular bed, which in point of fact I do not). You’re spending a third of your lifetime in a bed. Your bed might be sagging, ugly, groaning and infested with dust mites, because you are used to that situation and cannot see it. That calamity might escape your conscious notice. See it. Replace it.

There’s a lot more, so make sure you check it out.

Thanks to Eric for the link.

We’ve been pushing ideas like this forever, so we’re psyched to see one of the big agencies pushing it too.

Link

We’re the first to admit that our company Language in Common is unusual. Strange even. Sometimes we wonder if we’re crazy.

And it’s super hard to tell people what we do because we don’t quite fit into existing categories. And that’s ok with us. We’re into doing something new–merging lotsa creative practices into one studio. But today I’m really psyched because it’s becoming clear that a new category is emerging. It’s becoming clear that we’re definitely not crazy, and that a movement is being born.

I won’t try to define this category here. Instead, I invite you to check out this list of links. Different as these studios are, they share a lot in common with each other and with us.

Fake ID
Coudal Partners
Rebar
Local Projects
Troika
Stamen Design
Anomaly
FutureFarmers
Proboscis
Free Range Studios
Trizle
The Movement
Sid Lee
Cunning
Curiosity Group

What do you think? Do you see the common threads? Do you know of other like-minded creative shops? What do you think this kind of practice should be called?