Saturday, September 20, 2008

Triangles on Twitter


We often talk about closing triangles and making introductions as a way to build resilient networks through network weaving.

Here is an example of closing triangles via Twitter. Track the triangle closing process from my Twitter log above -- oldest tweet on bottom. The blank space in the tweet log was from another person I am following that had nothing to do with the closing of the triangle. Starting at the bottom of the above pic...

1) I follow John Robb on Twitter and he tweets about a book he is reading
2) I re-tweet his post so that those who follow me on Twitter can learn about the book.
3) June, who is following me, sees the re-tweet and aims her tweet at John [using @johnrobb] stating she has read the book and found it useful.

Two people that I have known, but did not know each other, can now be connected. They connect by seeing [via Twitter] their mutual interest in a book and in an idea. Maybe June and John can now talk about "resilient communities" and their experiences with them?

Since June and John have some similar interests, yet come from diffeent communities and contexts, we have another example of...

Connect on your similarities and profit from your differences!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Would it not be impossible for June to send a tweet to @johnrobb unless he is following her? This inability to close the triangle is what has been frustrating me about Twitter. Am I just mistaken about how it works?

Valdis Krebs said...

Good point Vanessa.

Twitter does not make it very easy, but maybe that stops some spamming???

John needs to check his Replies tab to see June's tweet aimed at him... otherwise it does not show up on his home page since he is not following her... yet.

Good idea to check Replies regularly... I often find interesting comments there from people I end up following.

June Holley said...

But Valdis could send John a message and tell him I'm a cool person he might want to follow. (hint, hint)

Anonymous said...

Ah, I see! I didn't know the replies tab showed you all replies. I see an example on my own replies page from someone I'm not following. Thank you for explaining that.

And yes, allowing it would lead to endless spam. Anything which makes connecting easier makes a better channel for garbage.

Now if only more people knew about this and checked the replies page frequently. Using a client, like Twitterific, you'd never be able to see these at all.

Leif Hansen said...

One problem with the current 'replies' tab is that it only shows tweets STARTING with @yourname. If a tweet has @yourname anywhere else in it, it gets lost in the noise (or search.twitter.com) finds it.

Anonymous said...

I use TwitterFox and it shows me replies and direct messages as well as tweets I am following.

Anonymous said...

If you use an rss feed, you have moreootions. Do a search. Twitter.com on @your name and subscribe to the rss. Or get an rss of your replies

I also use Twittermail. Nor real time :) but fast