Reliving the Civil War via Twitter

I wonder who came up with the idea of reliving the Civil War via Twitter. As some of you may know that I am a big fan of Twitter. It is truly a disruptive information technology. A few days ago, I came across this Twitter account:

• @AbeLincolnWP
  - Abraham Lincoln

Abe was twittering things like:

• "[Letter] U think slavery is right and ought to b extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to b restricted. That I suppose is the rub."
• "Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten, before we take the offices."

It looks like Washington Post is posting major civil war figures' thoughts and feelings via Tweets. Washington Post claims to derive the Tweets from historical information. This is still great. Here are the other folks who are Tweeting from 1861:

• @JeffDavisWP - Jefferson Davis (President of the Confederate States of America)
• @GovPickensWP - Governor Francis Pickens of South Carolina
• @MjrAndersonwp - Major Robert Anderson
• @PresBuchananwp - President Buchanan of the United States
  

The other Twitter accounts which are associated with this effort are:

• @CivilWarwp
• @1860sPresswp
• @WarLetterWP

I am assuming the other famous Civil War figures will start Tweeting as well. I would like to see these folks on Twitter:

1. Mrs. Lincoln
2. Ulysses Grant
3. Frederick Douglass
4. William T. Sherman
   
5. Robert E. Lee
6. Lincoln's cabinet
7. Lincoln's competitors in the Elections
8. John Wilkes Booth
9. George McClellan
10. and others
    

Twitter Lists

For the last two days, I have been organizing Tweets I follow into Twitter Lists. I follow US Government Tweets here to understand what do my fellow IT Geek/bureaucrats tweet about. It's been an interesting exercise. Most of it is plain noise which doesn't really make sense in the grand scheme of things. Twitter can be used as an enabling tool for agency branding strategies. Here are some of the tweets I saw:

• RT @FEMA Extreme winter weather tonight/tomorrow? Listen to local officials, prepare at www.ready.gov, & track at www.weather.gov - DHSJournal
  
• Governors declare state of emergency in VA, Maryland and Mass. in advance of approaching storm http://on.cnn.com/evCvN1 /via @cnnbrk - fema
• Want to Resolve Your ADA Complaint? Consider Mediation http://bit.ly/gWuVLV- Disabilitygov
• National Security Agency: Program Manager ( #FortGeorgeG.Meade , MD) http://bit.ly/cMXhyJ #ProjectMgmt #Jobs #Job #TweetMyJOBS - NSACareers
• Happy holidays to you and yours! - EPAgov (tweeted on Dec 25th, 2010)

Anyway as you can see, Twitter is giving me the power to group the tweets I follow into "lists". This is a great idea. Rather than Tweeter creating the lists for me, it lets me create the lists and lets me publish my lists to the Twitter world.

Why is this so great? Twitter is allowing its users to create user centric communities of interest. This is truly social. Usually organizations, standards' bodies or architectures define the communities of interest which to some degree fail because it doesn't appeal to everyone. I have seen this problem in the "search" world. Search engine technologies like Autonomy let organizations or data architects design the taxonomy for a specific topic and then the search engine moves the documents to the appropriate taxonomy node during indexing. If the taxonomy is not done right then bunch of documents don't get put in the taxonomy and they are grouped in the "other" node. The reason why folksonomies work better than taxonomies is because of the "social" aspect. Folks who know the content are organizing it and not some information architect who is following an archaic process. BTW why do relational data architects call themselves data architects. Most of them don't have a clue on how to build an ontology.

Anyway I see alot of potential with the social function. If anyone has an opinion regarding this matter then please chime in. You can also follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/eknock

Twitter-mania!

As everything has a "buzz" lifespan, Twitter seems to be growing and various entities like my former employer, ManTech International and others, have started Twittering. I have been twittering for a few months and I have seen that it is a great way of creating organic social groups or Communities of Interest (CoI). For example I tweeted about "Groovy on Grails" and next thing I know, I am being followed by Grails evangelists. I have had web designers requesting me to let them follow me since I tweeted about Photoshop and other Adobe products. It is a neat thing that people are following micro-blogs since people don't have time to read large blog articles. I have discovered that with Twitter that you can create a buzz about yourself or about some of the actions you do. I have seen people Twitter about their skills to market themselves. I have seen entities like CNN Breaking News which tweets the latest stories in news. I follow Pete Carroll who markets USC and how cool it is be a USC Trojan. I also follow Shaq and Mark Sanchez, Jets QB draftee from USC and many more. The question is why I do enjoy following them and other one million plus who follow Ashton Kusher. The answer is that it gives a person insight into celebrities. A way for us to relate to them. They are human like us. For example, Mark Sanchez loves hamburgers and he is always tweeting about Hamburger joints in NYC or his practices at the NY Jets facility. I, personally, like following people I know since it gives me a better insight into their lives.

Now I ask the question, "Does it make sense to have companies like ManTech International Twittering?" I answer that asking another question, "What are they trying to achieve?" Is it recruiting tool, employee retention tool, or a way to generating more buzz? I suggest that they should first monitor who is following them? Is it ex-employees like me or is it current employees or someone totally different? As an ex-employee, I would be interested if they had any interesting positions open up. If I were a current employee then I would like to hear about new benefits or about some new business and potential career development. If I were an outsider, I could be a competing business, a potential stock buyer, a prospective employee or a prospective client. The question is what are companies trying to twitter? There is a market there but some creative analysis and speculation may increase a company's image, moral and the quality of the work force. As for me, I wish Twitter had a better UI.

Work vs Tweet

Enterprise Tweeting anyone? I don't think so. Twitter is great for promoting yourself virally however I don't see any point of "tweeting" when you are at work. This capability exists with the various enterprise Instant Messengers like MSN Chat or Lotus Notes client however I see people hardly using it. The only time I really check someone's status is if they are available for a meeting or not. This status is available via the Calendar sharing capability available on Outlook, Google Calendar, Lotus Notes, etc., etc. So in this brief entry, I conclude that I don't see any Tweeting in the workspace. Who wants to Tweet when they have to work? ;)