creative maverick

I’m beginning to realise that twitter might be something very important. Sure there are lots of other Social Networking sites but there’s something special about twitter. No other service gives me the same experience of being connected moment by moment to friends, clients, gurus, celebrities and breaking news stories.

Here are some of the people I follow and I’ve found interesting recently:

Celebs and comedians

stephenfry king of twitter with half a million followers and jamie_oliver who tweets competitions, recipe of the day and news from his life.

Comedians RealBillBailey, RealDMitchell (of Mitchell and Webb), jimmycarr, Glinner (Graham Linehan), DaveGorman, daraobriain, and MitchBenn who recently did a live comedy gig on twitter! In his e-gig, Mitch tweeted a song about twitter based on Bohemian Rhapsody which included the tweet:

“I see a little grainy twitpic of a man/SCARAMOUCHE SCARAMOUCHE WILL YOU START A NEW HASHTAG”

You’d surprised the number of famous and powerful people you can find on twitter including BarackObama.

Community

I watched the final of The Apprentice recently and at the same time tracked the conversation going on all over Britain on twitter on the Apprentice hashtag. (A hashtag is a way to collate all the tweets from different users on a particular topic.) The result was like watching The Apprentice in the same room as the rest of Britain sharing people’s surprise at the final winner and commenting on the end of series chat-show as it took place.

Also I’ve been experiencing an interesting phenomenon; I was talking about a great online application I’ve been using to draw my family tree but complained about something it didn’t do. The next day I got a message from the creators:

@johnsw we are working on features to enable users to do this pretty soon.

My friend Jay Versluis also received spontaneous replies from other companies when he tweeted about his frustration with them.

Gurus

For daily inspiration, try LCC_Thoughts, AutofocusTM (Mark Forster), tferriss (author of The 4 Hour Workweek), and tonyrobbins the success guru.

There are also fascinating business, marketing and technology gurus on twitter including richardbranson, chrisguillebeau, DanielPink, cshirky, chr1sa, and JasonBradbury from the gadget show.

Iran

In Iran, twitter has played an instrumental role in the recent protests over the contested election as all other media and communication is in lockdown. persiankiwi sends live updates moment by moment on what’s going on over there. The downside of following the Iran coverage on twitter is of course that it is all unverified but reading tweets from someone who is about to go to a march that they may not actually return from is a very powerful experience. It makes even 24 hour rolling news seem old. Look at the hashtag #iranelection to see all the latest tweets.

Tweets from outer space

NASA astronaut Astro_Mike sent tweets from the shuttle orbiting earth last month:

From orbit: Night pass over Australia, the city lights give stunning signs of life on our planet within the darkness of nighttime

From orbit: Eating chocolates in space, floating then in front of me then floating and eating them like I am a fish

From orbit: As I closed my eyes to sleep last night I thought “these eyes have seen some beautiful sights today”

and equally fascinating, this tweet once he was back on earth:

Getting re-adjusted to gravity, let go of a small bag of groceries and must have expected it to float, luckily no damage

So…

The end result of all this is that I find I am having a different kind of experience on twitter than on any other similar social networking site. It’s one of being connected to the both the big announcements and the interesting minutiae of people’s lives.

In my exploration of play, it is particularly important because it is a format that allows people to reveal their true character even more than they do in a blog. It gives us a chance to play out our interests, passions and foibles and in the process discover the common themes and threads that we ourselves might not have noticed.

Learn more about twitter

On Wednesday July 8th, San Sharma will be explaining the real power of twitter for you, your creativity and your business at Scanners Night.

Book a ticket now and save £5

And while you’re waiting for the 8th to come around please follow me, johnsw.