The Cosmopolitan Blog

I nearly lost my blog last night (DB backup issues), but didn’t, thanks to the diligence of my web host. Still, during the 3 hours of sheer panic, many thoughts went through my mind. Would anyone miss it, other than me? Would i start all over again, or just give up?

Very quickly, i wondered if it was all worth it. I mean, how many people was i really affecting? Afterall, i’m not the most famous blogger in the world, so the answer is “less than the famous bloggers of this world”… but even for those famous bloggers… don’t they sometimes think that they’re just talking to thin air?

So then i thought… here we are, in this little bubble of technology… blogs, twitter, social media, etc… but who really cares other than those who know about it? For every 10 twitterers, there are a million that have never even heard the word, let alone understanding it’s power. Does that make them less of a customer or an audience? Should we ignore them?

Too often, when i request feedback on a particular trend or idea, i find that all i get is the feedback of the last person we spoke to. I hear “the trend is to start using this technology”, but actually, it’s not… it’s just that we spoke to 5 people in our own bubble and they all said the same. But what about the rest of the world out there? We seem to forget what “gathering market feedback” really means.

So imagine my relief when i found out that one of those famous bloggers was talking about exactly that, hours later. Read “Get out of your own way” from Mitch Joel. Then come back and tell me, do you agree? Are we just that conceipted that we think that everyone does it the way we do it?

How many of you are old enough to remember when handwritten letters were the main written communication tool?From letters, we went to faxes, then to email, then to Instant Messaging, then to text messaging, and finally to things that are so fast, like Twitter.  And in theory, all great advances in technology. Right?

Right. I mean, c’mon, this is so much better than having my mom call me every day saying “did you get my letter? what’s wrong with your postal system?”

So email came along and changed everything. Suddenly, delivery was instant. But we could still claim that we hadn’t “checked our email”, this would buy us response time (a day maximum).

But now we have twitter and text messages, and things are getting even faster.

Here’s my question. Is it because the delivery method is getting faster, that we have to respond right away? And if we respond right away, aren’t we just saying to the sender that we’re available, 24/7? Is that healthy?

Even the busiest gurus agree that we should slow it down, see Chris Brogan’s post “Be Realistic About Time“. Manage people’s expectations. Don’t answer right away.

Try it out. I’m sure you have 1-2 people who email you constantly. Even if you read their email, leave it in your inbox. Wait an entire day (i’m serious) and respond to them the next morning. If they text message you to ask you if you received the email (yeah, cuz that makes sense!), don’t answer. It might take a few times, but they’ll get the message.

Do you agree? Is this a good tactic? Are you someone that is overloaded and wants to slow it down? Or do you thrive on the amount of communication you receive?

I’ve read a lot of articles recently about the best way to use twitter. But i always find them biased, one way or another. Some teach you how to promote yourself, others tell you not to. some tell you that you should make it personal about what you are doing, others tell you we don’t care whether you’re eating a chicken sandwich.

But this article was refreshing: “7 Ways to be Worth Following on Twitter“. It balanced, in fact, the whole message of the article is that you should be balanced in your tweeting.

It’s like the unwritten code of ethics for Twitter. I like.

Which site(s) do you consider the most popular web 2.0 / social bookmarking sites out there? Vote now in the poll on the right (scroll down a bit if this is the latest post of this blog). Also, i want to hear from you. Which sites to you like? Which work well? Which don’t? What features do you like? Which are the easiest to use? Which ones do you use for self-promotion, and which ones do you use for a collection of interesting links? Am i missing some crucial sites in my list (see poll)?

Write your comments below after you voted (in the poll, you can pick as many answers as you like).

Blogs are funny that way. They’re a historical log of your thoughts and opinions over time. Except that sometimes, your opinions change, so it’s worth remembering to post updates. So here’s me making an update to a post dating back 6 months called “Someone Please Explain Twitter To Me” to state that i am still a Twitter user, i’m addicted, I’ve integrated it into my blog, my facebook account, all my desktops and into my life, and still, i don’t understand it!

I don’t make very many twitter updates, considering some people twitter every 2 minutes, but apparently what i say matters, because i now officially have more “followers” of my updates than i have people following me (apparently, that’s a good thing, say the experts). I still agree with someone who commented on my previous post, that this just means i have an extra 20 stalkers (YAY!), but the good news is i get to “meet” people, and out of those 20 stalkers, 1 might actually have something insightful to say other than that he had sushi for dinner.

Turns out that twitterers (well those on my list anyway) are all quite techy, which suits me just fine, so i end up hearing of events, podcasts, posts and conferences that are sometimes interesting. Also, there is what is known as “twitter royalty”, such as Robert Scoble et al., and well, I’m not sure what to think of those guys other than they’re funny sometimes and conceited most of the time, but definitely worth following.

After all that, though, Twitter has become something i love to hate. I’m in touch with a bunch of strangers, and it takes time out of my day for nothing, and it serves no purpose whatsoever… just the way i like my applications.