Annoyance at spam twitter accounts had me lock up my twitter updates last week. The upshot of that was that by doing so, I moved some 500 people who had been following me into twitter limbo. For the last few days, I've been having to decide, one by one, which ones I let return to seeing my updates. Rather than do this willy-nilly, I came up with some basic rules that might be interesting to you as well.

In order for me to let you have a glimpse of my life, I've decided, I need to know you or know of you, or at a minimum want to know you. If I don't know you or know of you, the only way I can tell if I want to know you is from your online identity, which in this case means glancing at your twitter profile. If you follow thousands of people, I'm probably not going to let you follow me, because it bespeaks of a lack of interest in me as an individual. If the "person" is a company, product or service, forget it. There has to be some benefit to me in your seeing some of me, and that is unlikely to be the case with most companies. I can see how it might benefit them, but me? Unlikely.

The bar is much higher for me to choose to follow someone. In order for me to do that, there are two criteria: I have to know you well (we've at least had drinks or a meal), and you have to use your twitter account in a way that I find acceptable. By that I mean you don't twitter excessively or have long @ conversations or only @ people. You need to have something to say for me to want to hear it, not just responses. I have to know you well for the simple reason I need to understand a little of your life to make sense of some of your messages. Where you live, your family life, what you do for a living, your sense of humor, etc. Without context, a twitter stream can simply be stuff and nonsense.

Now, abstracting this just a little to all social networks isn't much of a stretch.

• Have something to say.
• Pick and choose who you follow and who follows you carefully.
• Offline context still matters.
• Reveal only as much as is necessary.
• Give me a reason to follow you--and to share with you.

It's a start anyway.

Originally posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 | Link | Comments (3) | Trackback (0)

Believe it or not, we're already thinking about next year's Interaction09, following the sell-out success of Interaction08. But we're not resting on our laurels: One of the things I'm curious about is why some of you chose to attend other conferences—IA Summit, CHI, etc.—instead of (or in addition to) Interaction08.

Obviously, we're not going to change the focus of the conference away from interaction design, but if there were other factors that caused you to instead go elsewhere, I'd be curious to hear them. Everything is up for grabs: location, program, etc. Email me at dan AT odannyboy DOT com or leave a comment.

Originally posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008 | Link | Comments (2) | Trackback (0)

Ok, maybe that isn't the best way to sell this job, but Adaptive Path is looking for a new CEO. If you or someone you know (or even know of) would be an interesting fit (combining business and design savvy), we'd like to know. Send an email to bryan dot mason at adaptivepath dot com.

Originally posted on Friday, April 11, 2008 | Link | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

I unwittingly entered Bizzaro World yesterday when the LA Times put on its front page a story about Todd Wilkens' War on Crackberries which mentioned a term I'd jokingly come up with two years ago: the "topless" (as in laptopless) meeting. United Press picked up the story, and before you know it, we had three news crews in the office asking me about going topless.

The ABC piece was national which was fun (my parents' friends called them: "Danny was on TV!"). Ironically, the ABC News clip is preceded by an ad for Blackberry. Heh.

Here's the local CBS news:

Here's the local NBC clip:

Some guidelines for topless meetings.

Going topless at meetings is apparently a women's issue too.

Originally posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 | Link | Comments (2) | Trackback (0)

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