Twitter as a Motivator?
Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 10:10PM 
I originally ruled out Twitter as just another crap-tastic time-waster, and it still might be. Blabbing about what you are doing in short bursts for the whole world to read screams "I'm the most important person ever!" Kinda lame. BUT, there is an interesting trend of actual utility with some of it's pawns. Here's several examples:
1. The Open Sourcer - I recently had a problem with some code on my blog. I posted on Twitter that I needed some help and the calvary came a-running. Pretty cool.
2. The Fund Raiser - Coach Adam is using it to get people to donate to a swim to raise money to fight cancer. It works!
3. The Leader - Twitter user McNitt is using it to motivate others to do the 100 pushups a day program. Very interesting how people are willfully following his cyber punishment.
4. The Self-Motivator - I've seen many others and myself posting their progress while working on a project. Many computer jobs are solitary and it is nice to get encouragement from others while working alone on something.
All other uses of Twitter are stupid and evil. Except for a few more I can think of... What are some of yours?
Reader Comments (34)
I've been using Twitter as my training motivator for a while now. I follow a lot of triathletes and their SMS updates throughout the day with respect to training really help keep me motivated. It's like a worldwide distributed cheering section.
A comment within 5 minutes of the posting? Obviously due to the fact that blog posts also get twitted out to followers. You people are SICK!
The 100 pushups Wednesday's are mad cool. Props to Mcnitt.
Gotta say, makes an excellent rss reader as well. I'm much more likely to read some zen tri when @texafornia is active on teh twitterz..
Ha! I knew you couldn't stay away from Twitter!!
As for legit uses for Twitter, there are tons in my opinion. Forget the platform, Twitter is simply a way to communicate with other people. The quality of your Twitter experience is equal to the people you choose to follow and the interactions you have with them. You have already identified and experienced some high-quality interactions. Of course you can goof-off on Twitter too, but if you do, that's your choice. You can't blame the platform for that. ;)
For me, the biggest attraction to Twitter is the ability to directly communicate and interact with people you might otherwise have no real world access to. For example, I follow many of the people I respect in my industry, web design and development. Two examples that come to mind are interactive designers Emily Chang (@emilychang) and Max Kiesler (@maxkiesler). Prior to Twitter, I may have seen Emily and Max's work, or may have seen them speak at a conference but that's the extent of the interaction. After the conference, it's not like I'm going to email them on a Tuesday or call them at home; that would be an intrusion.
But Twitter breaks down social barriers and opens lines of communication that didn't exist before. Often you find that these barriers were tied to the medium, that for example Emily and Max are 100% approachable on a Tuesday afternoon and welcome conversation if the form of communication is right. In this case, brief 140 character posts (aka - "tweets"). Enough of these exchanges and new connections and friendships are formed.
Here in San Francisco, everyone in tech is on Twitter and an interesting thing happens. Guaranteed, at every event I attend I meet a number of new people I either follow on Twitter, who follow me, or both. At that moment, the conversation simply continues as if we were old friends.
The same thing is starting to happen at Triathlons. I'm meeting triathletes I didn't know previously, locally, from other cities, etc. and new friendships are being formed. As a final example, I've listened to Zen and the Art of Triathlon since the beginning, but the first time you and I communicated was through Twitter.
So, you can see that I'm an advocate (and can also be accused of misusing Twitter more than a little;), but the bottom line is that behind each of those avatars is a real person, and there are some great, smart, interesting, and talented people out there who can improve your life if you can find and connect with them. My 100 Pushup Wednesdays are just for fun, but I know that each tweet about pushups, going for a run, etc. has resonance and that over time I have motivated a few people to discover or rediscover an interest in fitness.
How you use Twitter? It's up to you. Peace.
100 push-ups per day? I thought it was per week. My teats still hurt from yesterday's McNitt 100 and that was only day one.
But I see what you mean about Twitter twits with Twitterhea. But then, isn't "real life" like that?
I originally thought Twitter was kind of stupid, primarily because they marketed it as a "microblogging" tool. What it actually is though, is quite different. It's a multicast messenger with an SMS gateway. It's the evolution of IM, chat, and message boards. It's pretty amazing as a communication tool.
In fact, I found this blog post via Twitter. Neat, eh?
@mcnitt Nice! Is there a starbucks in your head? :)
So this is the second time I'm typing this because in Brett's blog I can't see the fields where I'm supposed to type my name and other stuff including the security question which I completely missed this time and when I've thought I've left comments before. Dude, get El Professor to brighten up the text and outlines for those boxes.
I find the most valuable use of Twitter to be Group Twittter. It allows us to send messages to a single Twitter account and have it rebroadcast out to only those people that follow that Twitter account. This was particularly useful at the Montauk Century, Gold Coast Triathlon and recently at Ironman Lake Placid. You might be asking, why not just send out the message and all of your followers will get it? My response is that I'm pretty sure that the social media folks that I interact with in San Jose could care less about "I'm at mile 65, did you get your bikes yet?", "There is a rider down at mile 78, slippery surface.", "At the third rest stop at 1:30pm which places me about 15 minutes behind you." Basically I do it out of respect. The other advantage is that a group of people can post toa single website which we are using to post stuff relevant to the Ragnar Run Relay on October at www.teamwhitelinefever.com and we use daily to post to the home page of www.racewithpurpose,org about news items on youth obesity charities or just when and where the team will be meeting up to train this week. It's simply more effective and efficient.
We did learn at IMLP that texting in the rain doesn't work so well (two cell phones destroyed), but it still beats "Hey, can you hear me now? Hang on someone is beeping in, that's the wind noise, ok hang on, I'll pull over" use of a head set or voice.
And the fatc that you can only put in a little over one hundred characters means you have to learn how to communicate more effectively, and more crisply, to avoid thesis posts like we're doing here.
As for fund raising, I've now raised $180 for cancer research exclusively through twitterers http://tiny.cc/swimandpaymemoney and I'll be honest, I thought with 80+ people following me that I'd get at least half of them to donate $10. I understand times are tough but with thes folks talking about dropping coin on P3C's, the $10 is a rounding error and doesn't even cover tax on the tax for that candy. But there is still one more day left and I figure I'll either hit the $500 mark http://tiny.cc/swimandpaymemoney or I'll lose what's left of my 40 followers after Twitter's ethnic cleansing event yesterday. Plus I'm matching all of the contributions up to the $500 so if we hit that mark, that will be $1,000 that gets donated to cancer research.
Bottom line, I simply want to see if by setting a manageable number of $10/twitter if this group would Tweet or get off the pot.
Cheers,
-Adam
www.racewithpurpose.org/coachadam
I thought twitter was stupid at first, but then as my contracts felt more like soul sucking harpies instead of things I enjoyed, it became a hideout.
I totally agree with McNitt. I have found that because of the restrictions built into twitter, ie - short, 140 character messages, it truly has become a different form of communication that spans all over the world. Its a different medium that is very non-committal and easy to use. I also think it's a very groovy method to "put something into the universe"; a way to express short thoughts and opinions without going into much detail or directing it to a specific person. I think that's very zen technology.
But there are the offenders who like to tell you when they do anything (ahem, McNitt, ahem). Its just like people abusing their cell phone or email or simple conversations - you just don't talk to them if they continue to do it.
all things in moderation....
@drjones42 it all depends how you like to use twitter. ppl here in SF tweet constantly, use it to update status, and are often engaged in multiple conversations in any given hour. if that's not how you use twitter, then you don't want to follow those people, and no hard feelings. twitter is all about birds of a feather.
conversation also tends to increase with the number of ppl you follow/follow you. with over 900 followers at this point, every tweet or @reply i make usually generates more discussion. i like it, but some won't. to each their own.
I mainly use it for personal branding. Somewhat dorky, but it just got me a new kick-ass job that upped my tri-gear budget.
Oh, and I get to stalk HACs at work. You can't argue with that.
Will you care if I say I'm picking my nose?
But really, twitter is for people with internet on their cell phones, right? I don't see how it could work any other way.
I'm a loser with no internet on the cell phone (or text messaging!). The only person that ever texted me was my mom once every 3 months to tell me something that she coulda called me about...oops, did i just admit that
So I cancelled it all, and I use the phone to talk to people. I have to admit though that my cell phone is totally lame and really old. I'm waiting for it to die and it won't!!!
oh yeah, I've always wondered this too...
Isn't it kinda bad to tell people on twitter that you're on vacation or something, so they'll know your house is empty and ready for someone to go break in?
And I'm very curious (i promise, I'm curious, I've always wondered this) as to how safe it is to let people know where you are at a certain moment so they could find you or a family member.
Ok, I've seen one too many scary movies.
Oh yeah, and Brett, is the Texas CHainsaw Massacre real?
And are the Longhorns really better than the Aggies?
Ok, is an Alabamanian making fun of a Texan like the pot calling the kettle black?
Outside of the big cities, Texas is full of longhorns, rednecks, oil wells, and Exxon stations. But no hillbillies. Those are all in 'Bama at the mudbogging festivals.
You should be careful with letting people know where you are. Let's say Jodi twitters that she's noodling for catfish (typical activity in Mobile.) People don't know how long she's going to be there, where she's going next, or who she's with. It's really not worth a stalker's time to try to chase you down. Just don't tell people where you are going to be in the future unless there will be lots of people there.
First off, I have to say that it's BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI (Mobile has a bay not a beach). That is my home. Haven't you heard the Jimmy Buffett song? It tells the truth!
(I do race some in Mobile, so I probably make it confusing where I'm from) and is it just me, or is it a coincidence that this tropical storm rolls in exactly 3 years after katrina? ( i was running sideways on saturday from all the wind)
But I have no ties to Mississippi colleges; I went to school at St. Mary's University in San Antonio.
However, just because I lived in San Antonio doesn't mean I'm an expert on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre! I know it's real! And I know you texans are covering it up!! It's a conspiracy to get us out-of staters to dive off I-10 and down into the valley. Those cowboys are freakin scary man!
And they don't use twitter, so who knows what they could be plotting!
I'm 100% kidding by the way. :-)
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