And that is fair.  But that isn’t Twitter.  At least not the best of Twitter.

Twitter becomes interesting (and useful) when you follow people that have similar interests, people who make you laugh, people who make you think, or you get similar people following you.  To accomplish that you have to be actively involved in Twitter – that doesn’t mean running it 24/7.  It does mean getting involved though.

I have four uniquely different groups of Twitter Friends.  Those that follow me for a variety of reasons, those I follow for business, those I follow to learn from, and those I follow to have fun with. It is easy for me to separate the three groups – because I pay attention to them based on the time of day.  During the day, I focus on people I learn from, and people I am invested in from a work standpoint.  Late at night I like to have fun with another group (although many individuals cross-over).

If you are just starting on Twitter you need to find interesting, and interested people.  Two quick ways to do that:

1) Go to http://tweetscan.com and type in a keyword you are interested in – like WiFi, or Microsoft.  Follow some of the people you see Tweeting things you find interesting.  Rinse and repeat.

2) Find people close to you – it is always nice to know that a Freeway is closed, or that school is canceled tomorrow.  Or even that a tornado is headed your way.  You can find people in your area on http://twitterlocal.net.  Don’t narrow your search too tightly – search for your city, or the nearest large city to start.  Again, find people that say interesting things and follow them. Rinse and repeat.

Twitter will ONLY work for you if you follow people – and don’t worry – you can always UN-follow them later.

But don’t stare as the public timeline flies past your screen and tell me you "don’t get it".  You can’t learn programming by clicking on executables, and you can’t learn to bake by eating donuts!

If you "don’t get" Twitter then you are lazy – or scared of "following" – or you just don’t want to get it.

And if those three things do not apply to you, and you still don’t get it – call me – let me help.  But first you need to follow at least 50 people. If you can’t find 50 interesting people on Twitter you are not trying.

PS – Download a Twitter Client Application – like Twhirl.  It takes your focus away from the public timeline and focuses on you, and your friends, and followers – and their friends (which may quickly turn into your friends).

Really.  Don’t dismiss this too quickly. 

I’m meeting a friend for lunch today and wanted to find a certain restaurant I had heard about some time ago, but had never been to.  I couldn’t find it in Google search, so I posted this on Twitter:

Just about ten minutes later a Twitter friend (Michael May, AKA Joffi), who lives in Michigan!,  sent me the answer.  Evidently he is better at search than I am!

But Twitter makes for a damned powerful distributed computing platform.  And a very effective Search Engine!

Like a High School friend that chooses a different college than you – when Twitter is gone you wish it wasn’t – but you forgive them.  Because they are, after all, friends. 

Twitter has done a great job building a sense of community.  Ev and Biz talk back to people.  When Twitter is up.  Not so much when it isn’t.  I can fix that!

Hell, I am a Twitterholic (12 step post to follow, I am sure!).

I even suggested yesterday that we send Twitter some Pizza. Shannon Whitley ran with it (and I donated) and he made it happen.

I Tweeted the first real-time blind date in Twitter. As far as I know.

I created the first Startup Company developed completely on Twitter.  Staffing, ideas, finances, etc.  As far as I know.

I started Tweeting about the need to relieve the Twitter servers of their workload before most people started Tweeting about a "distributed" Twitter.  I think we need smart clients that have an open source API they can all use to add features such as Peer To Peer, filtering, groups, etc.  But I think Twitter needs to be "the network".

I’ve blogged about all of these things over the last few months.  Right here, on this blog.

I deserve to be the Twitter Evangelist that they don’t know they need. Look at my Social Networking footprint (Google Search kr8tr – or just click it on the menu bar).

Oh – and I understand the API, and I have blogged a tutorial about using Track with GTalk.

So vote for me.  Tell @ev and @biz that I should carry the Twitter Torch!

Update – as of today, 29MAY08 Twitter Track is disabled. I will update this post when it is turned back on.

Twitter has been described as a “micro-blogging tool”. And it is that. It is also a chat client.

And it is an extremely useful research tool. By tracking specific keywords (your company name for example) you can obtain a near-real-time feed anytime anyone on Twitter mentions your company.

First, the “Track” command. According to the Twitter FAQ:

What is tracking?
Tracking is an SMS or IM only feature that allows you to receive all twitters that match a word you’re tracking. For example, if you send track Obama, you will receive all updates that match “Obama.” All updates sent from tracking will begin with parenthesis. You can easily stop getting these messages by sending untrack Obama.

So using track is quite simple. From your cell phone your could use a Twitter Mobile Client and send Twitter a message like “track Microsoft” and you would receive a message every time Microsoft is mentioned. Of course, receiving an update every time someone mentions Microsoft is probably not what you want to do on your cell phone.

And that is where GTalk comes in. GTalk is a Google Chat Client. And it works wonderfully with the Twitter Track function.

And if you have a GMail account (get one here for free) GTalk can also automatically archive all of your “Tweets and Tracks” into your GMail account.

After downloading and installing GTalk (and creating an account) you can now add Twitter to GTalk You do this on Twitter.com by going to the Settings page and clicking on the “Devices” tab.

Enter your GMail address and select GTalk from the drop-down menu.

Click “Save”

You will be prompted to send a unique code back to Twitter from within GTalk

Just type in the code in the GTalk Chat window (after selecting twitter@twitter.com from the user list) and press enter.

Nearly instantly (assuming GTalk/Twitter are both functioning) you will receive a response from Twitter.

Now you are set.

To track something (Microsoft for example), just type “track microsoft” into the chat window. Twitter replies letting you know it heard your request. And as you can see, it took only seconds to get a result.

To stop tracking type “untrack microsoft”.

You can also correspond with all of your Twitter friends with GTalk. Let me know you got this working by sending “@kr8tr – Tracking is set up” or something similar to me!

Of course, for normal Twitter use, I recommend Twhirl – and Adobe AIR-based application that has a lot more bells and whistles for Twitter.

And soon you’ll be able to use Track in Twhirl as well.

Final notes on Track – it does NOT pay attention to punctuation, so Tracking “@kr8tr” is the same as Tracking “kr8tr”. Track also ignores CASE.

And as of now, there is no filtering in Track – so you will get every instance of the word you track, even if it includes words you would rather not see. I expect this to be addressed (at least at the Twitter client level) very soon. In fact, the CEO of Seesmic was interviewed on The Gillmor Gang and committed to adding these features to Twhirl very soon.

http://lagesse.org/my-twitter-bio-and-follow-policy/

Today’s San Antonio Express News has a rather large (9×8 inch) photo of me on the cover of the business section.  L.A. Lorek (lalorek on Twitter)wrote the article (link below).

Photo courtesy of the San Antonio Express News.

I scanned part of the article because the online version doesn’t have the sidebars the printed article has (and my friend Ike Pigott (ikepigott on Twitter).

Click the images for larger views.

I like the article about Twitter because it focuses on how useful Twitter can be as a business development tool.  I’ve certainly met the most interesting people via Twitter!

Rob La Gesse, a San Antonio-based technology entrepreneur and consultant known as kr8tr on Twitter, has recruited employees and launched a start-up company using Twitter.

MySA.com: Business

But I’ll be back soon.  I’ve just been busy trying to find legal ways to keep the money I have earned (tomorrow is tax day here in the US).

But when Twitter is down, it does suck.  That’s about 400 people I can’t connect with right now.

Alltop aggregates RSS feed – "the best of the blogs" but they also sort them by category – and they have a lot of categories.

Today I got a dozen hits from http://life.alltop.com before I wondered what was up.  So I went and looked.  If you scroll down a bit, there is my blog, on the left.

I think the "life" section is probably where my blog belongs – because I talk way more about personal stuff than tech – and when I do talk tech, it’s normally personal!

About an hour later I got an email from Guy Kawasaki telling me they added me to Alltop – a canned email, but that’s cool.

So how did my blog make it?  My Technorati rank is ok – I’ve been in the top 100k often.  My subscribers via FeedBurner isn’t huge – averages 115 people/month.  So how did I get any attention?

I can only guess it was via Twitter.  Depending on who is online and active I may or may not Twit about a new blog post.  If I think it fits the (current) audience, I will.

Twitter gives you a huge voice.  But I’ve found I moderate (usually) what I Twit about depending on who is online, and active.  My Twitter friends online in the daytime are mostly different from those online at 1am.

And I appreciate that Alltop included my blog – it is just another way to make a new connection.

There was what I considered an inconsequential discussion on Twitter earlier this week that I was involved with. While my memory certainly isn’t perfect, I think it started when Steve Gillmor stated (again) that “links are dead”.

That statement, taken for what it actually says, doesn’t make any sense to me. People are making billions of dollars a year from links. Evidently I wasn’t alone because others asked Steve what he meant.

I asked Steve to explain it in Twitter – 140 characters (or 280, if it took two Tweets) and he basically didn’t respond. I imagine he’s tired of explaining “gestures” and “links are dead” – he’s been doing it for quite a while.

My opinion is that if he has been arguing these things for this long then he needs to simplify his message. I don’t think his message is wrong at all – but I think his delivery of the message is flawed.

In the context of that train of thought, I wrote:

realy [sic] smart people make really complex things simple. Like Winer did with RSS.

Some people (at least Karoli, and based on some of the NewsGang Live recordings I have heard since, probably Steve as well) thought that was a slap at Steve Gillmor.

It wasn’t intended that way – and although I don’t apologize for what I said, I wish I could have phrased it differently. But Twitter does have it’s limitations. Foremost being 140 characters per message.

So I’ll take a few more words to explain what I meant.

I talked to Steve Gillmor for the first time sometime within the last six months. I can’t remember exactly what spawned the conversation, but it did revolve around his idea of “gestures”. One of us called the other and we actually spoke for well over an hour – much of that was me trying to get my head around Steve’s though process. We also talked a bit about politics, and families, etc. It was a very pleasant conversation. But at the end of the call I told Steve something like, “I admit, I still don’t fully get this – and I plan on continuing to question you about it, and raise awareness with others”.

Steve said something to the affect of “GOOD! I want people to talk about this!”. We ended a nice and friendly chat that I found intellectually stimulating.

Then I started calling into the NewsGang Live show every now and then. I think we’ve had some extremely interesting conversations and I know some of Steve’s listeners agreed with me on occasion, and other times with Steve – depending on the topic. Often Steve and I agreed. But I also think people enjoy a little lively debate. Sometime Steve will create that (as a true showman should). Sometimes I would.

When I saw people asking Steve what he meant by “links are dead” on Twitter I jumped in. Time to raise awareness, and all of that.

What I realized though is that Steve wasn’t answering the question – probably because of a combination of already answering it a thousand times, and the fact it was limited to 140 characters on Twitter. That’s when I realized that Steve had no “elevator pitch” for these ideas. He couldn’t communicate them quickly (they are complex, so that is understandable).

It was within the context of me thinking about Steve’s lack of an elevator pitch that I made the “make really complex things simple” statement. I’m used to dealing with startups and I know how important it is to have a message that is accurate, intriguing, and concise.

So believe what you will – I was not slamming Steve – I was actually trying to help him.

Since then Steve has twice made comments on his show that make me think he’s pissed off about this exchange. And if he is, then that’s fine. I don’t need everyone on the planet to be my friend. And it is apparent by listening to some of my conversations on NewsGang Live that Steve and I disagree on some things. Sure, I’ll call in and argue with him. WTF would I call in for if I agreed with everything and everyone? Where’s the fun there? What opportunity is there to learn from new ideas and differing perspectives if everyone agrees on everything?

And this is one of the reasons I respect Steve – he constantly invites people that rub him the wrong way at times. Jason Calacanis is an example – although often full of amazing insights, Jason can also be pretty demanding to “manage” on a call. But he gets invited back again, and again – and honestly, some o the best NewsGang shows, IMHO, are the ones where Jason gets on a roll and the listeners can imagine Steve’s blood pressure shooting through the roof as he tries to get a grip on his own show.

So I am not suggesting Steve doesn’t like people that disagree with him. I’m pretty sure that he loves surrounding himself with people of different opinions and perspectives. Most highly intelligent people I know do.

So I hope that clears up the Twitter part of this debate. Was I arguing with Steve? Hell yes. Was I being rude to him – I don’t think so, and it wasn’t my intent.

Do I think Steve makes sense with his gestures and “links are dead” memes? Yes, once I understood what the hell he means by them – which isn’t easy, for two reasons. Every explanation I have seen on “gestures” has been hundreds of words long, if not more. Second, Steve seems tired of trying to find a new way to describe them.

Until a few days ago when he wrote a new blog post called Swarmtracking. This post isn’t really even about gestures or “links are dead” – but I think within this post I found the most concise descriptions for each that I had been trying to get from Steve on Twitter:

In the pushback around this issue, I’ve also referenced my shorthand expression for a comparable observation of gesture fidelity in the blog space, namely the use of links as a measure of authority and respect: Links are dead. What I mean by that is that I often choose not to link not as a measure of disrespect but as a measure of an increased recommendation or gesture of authority. In essence I’m suggesting you link to or follow the person, not the individual post or item.

The problem is (the real problem, I think) is that the tools available just don’t adapt well to the way Steve looks at the world, and the way he thinks the value of something could (should) be measured. This is pretty apparent with his whole argument for not using the Ampersand (@) in Twitter replies. That’s discussed in the “Swarmtracking” post as well, but Steve doesn’t explain it well – he did on a NewsGang Live Podcast yesterday. And basically it comes down to three things:

1. The iPhone Twitter client Steve uses doesn’t support an easy way to use the “@” – it takes him three buttons to insert the Ampersand. Crappy tool, that one!
2. Steve doesn’t understand what the ampersand really does on Twitter. He seems concerned that using it somehow excludes people from the conversation (which I find I completely disagree with – often I see someone I follow use the @ with someone I don’t follow - that makes me go look at that person, follow them, and thus expand the conversation. I see no negatives in using the @ sign and nothing but negatives in not using.
3. Sure – you could argue that even if Steve doesn’t use the @ sign I can manually copy and paste the twitter name into twitter and looked that person up. And I could. But I don’t – for the same reason Steve really doesn’t use the ampersand on Twitter – he is too lazy to. Just like I am too lazy to cut and paste the name into Twitter.

So the whole Twitter ampersand issue is bogus – Steve’s tool prohibits Steve from [easily] taking advantage of the full functionality that most other Twitter clients provide. And his decision that it just isn’t worth his time to use the ampersand reduces the potential network effect on conversations for all of the rest of us that DO have full-featured clients.

By NOT using the ampersand Steve is sending a gesture – in this case, I think a bad one. One that says, “my tool makes that hard for me to do, so I won’t do it, even if that makes things a lot harder on all of the rest of you”.

I’m sure Steve will have more to say about this over time, and I probably will as well. Perhaps in our respective blogs, maybe on Twitter, and almost certainly on the NewsGang Live (assuming Steve un-mutes me)!