Thoughts on Twitterville by Shel Israel

Twitterville by Shel Israel

Good little book here. While there is much to learn, this is not a How-To book.

So I’ve only started using Twitter with abandon over the two weeks or so. Sure, I opened an account a few years ago, but was too busy working on my dissertation and then getting settled in at Mizzou to spend any time playing with it. At that point I saw no need to use it. After all, I was busy condensing my life. I closed my Yahoo account. I ended my relationship with MySpace. I figured Facebook and LinkedIn would be enough for me. I was wrong.

There’s something about Twitter that has captured my imagination. I cannot pinpoint it, but I like the ‘real-timeyness’ of it, as compared to FaceBook and LinkedIn. While all are communites of a sort, there’s a difference. LinkedIn I use for my professional persona, looking for places that might need my skills talents and abilities. It is business first. FaceBook no longer seems to be the small community it once was. It is akin to a megalopolis or megaregion: there’s a hugeness to it now. Twitter is somewhere in-between the two.

Perhaps that is why “Twitterville” as a name fits so well. It takes a village to raise a child and there are village idiots running around out looking for other village idiots. Twitter fits between the seriousness of the one endeavor and silliness of the second.  

Twitterville covers the history of Twitter. Yes. Ho-hum. More than that, it is a compilation loaded with stories, exemplars and parables. If narratives and stories are one of the most important ways we make sense of our world, than Israel does a great job of ‘making sense’ of Twitter, removing some of the ambiguity and equivocality. Karl E. Weick is just as applicable online as off.

He delves wonderfully into Twitter culture. That’s not an easy thing when looking at a village as broad and loosely connected as Twitter is. He shows clients or customers contacting businesses with complaints and bravos and how those businesses reacted. (Most of the time: FAST!)

He gives due warning about trolls and spammers and scammers and other undesirable PITAs you may come across and what to do about them.

There are tips for both organizational and personal branding scattered throughout the book. So, if you are someone longing to make yourself into a brand, there’s a lot here to discover and become motivated. And it's a heck of a good read too. That alone makes it a pleasure and makes it stand out amongst boring business books.


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