FOCUS: SOCIAL NETWORKING
At warp speed, Twitter morphs from novelty to near-essential
Social-network breakthrough draws comparison to invention of telephone
Minutes after terrorists began their attack in Mumbai last month, people around the world turned to their computers and cell phones to get and pass along any news they could.
People holed up in that Indian city sent pleas for help, pictures, live-from-the-scene videos, links to news stories or the latest rumors through text and other electronic messages.
“[Four] terrorists reported shot dead,” read one note sent late Nov. 26 over a site known as Twitter.
“Even before I actually heard of it on the news, I saw stuff about this on Twitter,” Neha Viswanathan, a blogger with Global Voices Online, told CNN.
Twitter is one of the newest social-networking Web sites, and it’s starting to reach a critical mass of users.
People can use their computers and cell phones to quickly and easily send brief notes to a circle of friends, instead of messaging each one individually. These Twitter notes can announce what someone is doing at the moment, ask a question or pass along a link to an interesting blog item or video.
Everyone from nonprofit groups to news organizations and Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has created a presence on Twitter, Facebook and other social-networking sites, and it’s starting to pay off in tangible ways.
“It’s like the telephone was 100 years ago. Everybody is going to be using this somehow in part of their life,” said James G. Milles, a social media enthusiast and founder of a network for Twitter users in Buffalo.
About 6 million people use Twitter to tell their network of acquaintances — in 140-character notes — what they’re doing.
The Twitter posts, known as tweets, can be serious and newsy, as they were during the Mumbai attacks.
Far more often, though, Twitter captures the ebb and flow of daily life.
“One time, I had a craving for a good steak. So I Twittered, ‘Where’s the best place to get a good steak in Buffalo?’ And I got like three suggestions in five minutes,” said Milles, who ended up going to Hutch’s.
A boon to businesses
One local Twitter user, Niagara County real estate agent Colleen Kulikowski, sends out tweets on her latest listings of homes for sale.
And woodworking artist Keith Burtis has used Twitter to promote his business — and to help him propose to his girlfriend.
Twitter takes social networking to a very basic level: “What are you doing?” as the site asks its members, though answers are limited to 140 characters.
Twitter users sign up to follow people whose tweets interest them, and other Twitter users in turn can follow them.
They can send these Twitter notes via text message from a cell phone, as many did during the attacks in Mumbai.
Milles, Burtis and a couple of others founded the Buffalo Tweet Up group to give the region’s Twitter users a chance to continue the conversation offline.
Large companies such as Starbucks and Comcast are getting onto Twitter as a new way to reach consumers. But the service may be particularly helpful to small businesses.
“For the first time, you can reach a lot of people without paying, basically, or very minimally paying. And, really, it’s that viral effect of the Internet,” said A. J. Dicembre, who helped create BuffaloME, a local social-networking site.
Fostering relationships
In February, Burtis sent out tweets to his circle of followers asking them in desperation to buy some of his work.
He had been planning to take his girlfriend to Toronto to propose, using a podcasting conference as cover.
The week before, his car broke down, and the money meant for the last payment on the engagement ring went to car repairs.
Soon after he sent out the tweets and launched a marathon wood-turning session, enough people agreed to buy his sculptures, bowls and wine stoppers that he was able to make both the ring payment and the Toronto proposal. “And it was all because of social media. I had built up relationships over the past year and a half with these people,” said Burtis ( www.magicwoodworks.com ). One of the most telling uses of social media is the story of the frozen green peas.
Last December, Virginia resident Susan Reynolds underwent a needle biopsy to determine whether she had breast cancer.
To ease the pain and swelling afterward, Reynolds initially put an ice pack on her chest. But she didn’t like the feel of the ice pack, so she replaced it with a pack of frozen peas.
Reynolds wrote about this on her blog and included a picture of the pack of peas peeking out from her top. She also sent out tweets about the peas.
This started a wave of tweets about the peas, and scores of pea-themed photos ended up on Twitter and Flickr, the photo- sharing site.
Looking to save lives
Another Twitter member and Reynolds friend, Connie Reece, started the Frozen Pea Fund, which has raised more than $30,000 for cancer research.
The University at Buffalo’s Michael Stefanone and Thomas Feeley are researching whether organ donation can be promoted through Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.
“If you can tap into [online networks] as a resource, they may be a viable marketing strategy,” said Stefanone, UB assistant professor of communication. “There is no formula to ensure that you’re going to be successful.”
When the owners of Panaro’s Restaurant in Allentown decide on the day’s special, co-owner Mike Concialdi sends a tweet from his cell phone.
“Pasta fagioli — great soup on a chilly day,” read one recent note, accompanied by a picture of a steaming bowl of the soup.
“It’s amazing how it works, and I think more and more people are learning about it,” said Concialdi, who did this at the urging of a friend, Steve Poland.
The Buffalo Homecoming group uses Twitter, Facebook and other sites to spread the word and reach new members.
Organizer Marti Gorman noted that the original Buffalo Old Home Week, held in 1907, relied on city residents sending postcards to out-of-town relatives.
“They used the social networking of that time. And we must use the social-networking tools of our time,” Gorman said.
‘A way to know’
Kulikowski met Gorman at a Buffalo Tweet Up event. The real estate agent got involved in Buffalo Homecoming and later got the idea to do a Niagara Falls version, Niagara Rises, which she touts in tweets.
“What’s beautiful about the Internet is that you have people that are around the country that want to know what’s going on in Buffalo and Niagara Falls. So how do you give them a way to know what’s going on? You’ve got to give them a place to find it,” Kulikowski said.
Can this work? Tech enthusiasts believe that Obama’s campaign was able to translate the vast online ties it made to young people through social media into votes.
“That was a huge online movement,” said Mike Brennan, founder of Noobis, a Fredonia company that helps businesses take advantage of online social networking. “. . . All those people felt very connected.”
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