I've been on twitter for a little while now. And I've had a few thoughts running through my head but never enough to warrant a post, until now. I want to cast these thoughts into bytes for later mockery. I expect when I retire I'll come back and read these posts (in what ever format they evolve into) and make a lot of fun of myself. Kind of like when I look at pictures of myself as a teenager now. The "what were you thinking!" kind of stuff. This could be a long and winding post, apologies in advance. On with the dreck!
So I'm on twitter, mostly as an easy method to update my facebook status, because Ecto (my blog editor of choice) has an option to set your twitter status to notify of new blog posts and lastly (and perhaps secretly the real reason) the pure geeky-ness of it. For the most part, I follow people I know, but I do follow some non-people, like The American Red Cross and a few celebrity types like Dr Tiki or The Big O and Dukes radio show. Recently I got back on the Diggnation bandwagon and decided to follow Alex, Kevin and a few others. Kevin Rose tweeted a note about a new website he put up: wefollow.com which is a twitter directory that ranks by number of followers. Good idea that fills a certain need for folks. I used it to find other interesting people to follow like Tim O'Reilly, Leo LaPorte, Snoop Dogg and Steve Case. Initially I started following people like crazy. Before I new it I had added a few dozen people. I did this late at night so it seems like a great idea at the time. Then the next day started. And I started to drown in an avalanche of tweets. Some very interesting ones, like Tim O'Reilly's or funny like Christopher Walken. The irony of cwalken to me is I distinctly remember not laughing very much when he was on SNL a few years back. Go figure. Anyway, the rest of them were just pure clutter for me. When I finally got back to check my timeline on my phone, I had 375 tweets waiting for me. In less than 12 hours. DOH! So I started dropping people like wet socks off a cloths line.
Brief interlude. Back in 2007 after leaving the Red Cross I was contacted by someone from HR at Revolution Healthcare. They made it clear that it was a Steve Case venture. Basically using his name and reputation as a recruiting tool. At first I wasn't very keen on the idea. Didn't seem like a great fit. But the more I thought about it the more I liked the idea. Healthcare, and in particular health insurance needs a revolution or at the very least a 'market correction' in this country. Steve Case's name could open the doors to companies that would otherwise ignore a startup. The ratio of insurance company people to health care providers in amazing to me (even worse when you look at just Doctors). So I thought working for Revolution Healthcare might be worth a second look. If Steve Case could use his name recognition and access to other execs to open doors, the venture could be very successful. Turns out it a good thing the HR person never got back in touch with me (although I was peeved at the time) since they've laid off a lot of people. It was nice idea. Hopefully they can weather the storm and keep trying. I would have liked to have been a part of it.
Back to twitter. Steve Case. Started following him because he came up in the top-10 for #tech on wefollow.com (doesn't seem to be anywhere on wefollow.com now) and because revolution health care. Wanted to see what kind of exec he might have been. Well turns out he likes the finer things it seems. He's had some expensive tweets (well at least for a lower pay scale guy like me). Pics from Sunset in Captiva FL, Advice on where to stay in Maui. Starting a resort in Costa Rica. Then there's the @user replies to people I don't know. Kind of weird only seeing half of a conversation. But I kept with it for about a week. Today, can't take it anymore, have to 'unfollow' Steve Case. Not that he knows or cares mind you. I wouldn't in his place. But he wasn't saying anything that was particularly interesting to me, especially in the context of what I use twitter for.
Which leads me to another Twitter thought. Twitter needs a feed filter ability. Not sure I've thought this idea out completely but I need two twitter feeds. One of my 'a-list' people I follow. Close friends, businesses that announce stuff via twitter (like MacHeist, w00t or Red Cross) and the like. Then the B-list twitter where all these other folks can go. I could then follow up with their stuff when I have spare time or an interest. Maybe another way to look at it is 'push' the tweets from group A but I'll 'pull' the tweets from group B when I want to see what they had to say. I'm sure there's a better way to say what I mean here. And who knows, maybe you can already passively follow people and not have them clutter up your timeline and I just haven't figured it out yet.
Anyway, time to get back to the business at hand. Time to push 'publish' on this ramble and have it announce via twitter, go figure.
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