Portland a-Twitter, an editorial opinion
While I’m not one of the old guard in terms of Twitter usage (I’m somewhere around user 1,340,521), I am a big fan of the service.
Twitter, in fact, was one of the motivating factors for starting the Silicon Florist in the first place. Because, via Twitter, I was hearing about a bunch of cool things happening in the Silicon Forest. But I wasn’t seeing anyone covering them for a wider audience.
And, hence, the seed was planted.
So, why do you care? Well, turns out that there is a very vibrant Twitter community here in Portland. I’m following more than 500 folks in the Silicon Forest on Twitter, as we speak. And it’s a great resource for staying in tune with what’s happening around here.
Now, that type of following isn’t for everyone. That’s for sure. But, nonetheless, I would encourage you to give Twitter a shot, if only to pitch me story ideas.
Getting started is easy.
- Register for an account at Twitter
- Type something in the “What are you doing?” box
Congrats! You’re on Twitter!
Now, let’s move on to some “advanced use.” Start following some people and getting into the conversation. Right off the bat, I would recommend a few of my Portland favorites Marshall Kirkpatrick, Josh Bancroft, Scott Kveton, Jason Grigsby, Raven Zachary, Aaron Hockley, Betsy Richter, Peat Bakke, Jake Kuramoto, Jason Harris, Katherine Gray, Josh Pyles, Audrey Eschright, Ignite Portland, Portland on Fire, and… honestly I could go on and on. (”And I love each and every single one of the folks I follow equally, for they are all special in their own right,” he said, hoping to deflect complaints for those he might have inadvertently missed.)
How do you follow people?
- Log into your shiny new Twitter account
- Click on the folks’ links above
- Click the big “Follow” button underneath each person’s picture
Voila!
You can even follow me and the Silicon Florist, if you like.
I know, I hear you. “How do I find more Portland people?” You are on the fast track, my friend. Bravo! (Or Brava! as the case may be.) There are a number of ways to find more Portland folks:
- TwitterWhere by Portland’s own Matt King allows you to get an RSS feed of everyone twittering in the Portland area
- Twitter’s search function (in your Twitter sidebar) can help you find Portland folks
- TwitDir can augment your search
- Maybe some Portland folks will be kind enough to provide their Twitter names in the comments below (hint, hint)
Oh, and last, but certainly not least: It’s polite etiquette to follow those who are following you on Twitter. So, if you follow me, I’ll follow you. And I encourage you to follow suit. One-way conversations are no fun.
So why the big Twitter push from the Silicon Florist?
It’s purely mercenary, I assure you.
I’m convinced that, for all the cool stuff I hear about from my current Twitter brood, there are ten times more Silicon Forest startup stories happening. I want to hear about them. And Twitter is a good way for me to stay in touch. Nuff said.
I’m looking forward to seeing you on Twitter.
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Things people have said about this post
From Jason on January 4th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Hey, I’m interesting! can I be on your list?
jason - twitter.com/harrisja
From Rick Turoczy on January 4th, 2008 at 11:21 am
You caught me mid-edit. You’re on there.
From Eddie Awad on January 4th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Nice post. I’m also enjoying your company on Twitter.
From Dan on January 4th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Over at witigonen.com, we’ve all just decided to give twitter a go.
twitter.com/gidyczd
From Tinymeat™ (Mikey) on January 4th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I found this post from Kveton on, you guessed it, twitter. I own an handmade accessories biz (tinymea in PDX that seeks to marry to upswell of locally handmade products with the crowdsourcing model made famous by threadless.com. We have met many of the illustrators we collaborate with on various social networking sites (myspace, flickr, facebook) and Twitter is another great way to keep in touch and share ideas.
From Banana Lee Fishbones on January 4th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
I’m on at http://www.twitter.com/verso if you want to follow me. My posts to the Metroblog get pushed there as well as my own personal whatever I feel like in 140 character chunks.
I’m glad Twitter inspired the florist. (:
From Nick on January 4th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
PDX Twitter here, though I live up in Vancouver.. >_> close enough for me.
Nick here.. http://twitter.com/Zolotkey
From Betsy on January 4th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
*Now* I know why I just had so many new Twitter subscribers….! Thanks for considering me one of your favorites - but I must admit that I feel *so not worthy*.
From Jason Grigsby on January 4th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Thanks for mentioning me Rick. Now I know who to blame for my lack of productivity today!
From Josh Bancroft on January 4th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Seriously. I usually get a few new Twitter followers per day, but today, there’s been a deluge. What’s the Twitter analogue for Google Juice? Because you have lots of it.
From Burn, Baby, Burn! Ignite Portland 2 in One Month at Ignite Portland on January 4th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
[…] the Portland people on Twitter have exploded with conversation about it (thanks in no small part to Rick Turoczy’s Silicon Florist post on Portland Twitter People). You can follow the Ignite conversation on Twitter by following @IgnitePortland, and also by using […]
From Paul Biggs on January 4th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Count me in for the Twitter fray. I just closed the book on the Facebook status vs. Twitter civil war: Twitter is now my micropost conduit of choice; it now powers the shout-outs on all my blogs, facebook, and anywhere else I can inject it. I’m at http://twitter.com/Techpaulogy
From Radio Gretchen on January 4th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
You can follow me at http://twitter.com/radiogretchen. Having actual followers makes my paranoia a bit more justified.
From Matt Beck on January 4th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
*Waves at the PDX Twitter geeks*
http://www.twitter.com/mattbeck
From Rick Turoczy on January 4th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Holy carp! Keep them coming folks. Glad to see all the Portland Twitter types getting all followed-up.
I’ve been busy following people since this posted.
From Michael on January 4th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Following up on Dan’s comment.. at Witigonen we just put the twitter stream on our site and will be posting our interesting links to twitter from now on. The best part about Twitter is their easy API, I think.
http://twitter.com/witigonen
From Brett on January 4th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
I’m a twitterer too. http://twitter.com/dieselboi
Tinymeat owes me a beer.
I owe BetsyRichter a beer.
I owe Verso (BLF) some tasty salts.
I owe lelonopo some tasty salts and nuts.
oh, the challenges of being connected.
From » Portland Start-up Index: Is your site there? - Silicon Florist on January 5th, 2008 at 12:10 am
[…] that I’m still happily digging out from an avalanche of new Twitter followers, I’m a little tardy on reporting the […]
From Gary Walter on January 5th, 2008 at 6:52 am
Way to go Rick! Nicely said. Is the Baghdad going to be big enough on the 5th?
http://www.igniteportland.com/
Follow me - http://twitter.com/gwalter
From Jeff the Great on January 6th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Okay, you have convinced me to give Twitter a try (username: JeffTheGreat).
However, I still don’t get the facination with Twitter. I’d love to have the tweets from those I am following go right to my RSS reader…is that possible? What about tweeting without having to go to twitter.com….are there other ways?
Finally…anyone have a good suggestions for Twitter software on my Blackberry? If I can’t do it on the BB, fa-get-about-it!
From Rick Turoczy on January 7th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Great questions, Jeff.
Yep, an RSS feed of all of your contacts is available at the bottom of you main Twitter page, http://twitter.com/home
There are a number of solutions available for using Twitter outside of the Web interface. Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote a great round up on the subject for Read/Write Web, http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_rww_guide_to_the_worlds_mo.php.
And finally, I don’t have a Blackberry, but I do hear about TwitterBerry quite a bit, http://www.orangatame.com/products/twitterberry/
From Josh Bancroft on January 7th, 2008 at 8:53 am
@Jeff - Rick covered it pretty well WRT the RSS feeds, etc. I’d just like to throw one more Twitter tool out there for everyone, that I find essential.
Terraminds.com will let you do a search of all tweets on Twitter for a particular word (day, your name) and generates an RSS feed you can subscribe to for that search. MUCH better and more reliable than Twitter’s built-in means of doing that (tracking, and @replies).
Also, I use Twitteriffic, which shows me tweets @myusername right in my main “timeline”, which the Twitter web page (and all its derivatives) do not. Handy.
From Jeff the Great on January 7th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Thanks for the info, Josh and Rick!
I added TwitterBerry and it seems pretty good…only thing is I wish it had “homepage” that I can start out on with a summary of activites.
With Mobile access and a Facebook App, I am already starting to like it!
From Scott Kveton · Power of PDX Twitterverse on January 10th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
[…] was reading Rick’s post from Friday about Twitter and Portland as well as getting added to Planet PDX (thanks Audrey!) and […]
From » Portland Startup Weekend: Could it be what the Rose City needs? - Silicon Florist on January 11th, 2008 at 9:48 am
[…] think that’s part of the reason why Portland’s Twitter community is so active and responsive. It’s why there’s a ever-growing number of us who are […]
From » Pulse of Portland begins beating - Silicon Florist on January 11th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
[…] if you’re not using Twitter (For shame! Here’s how you get started), you’re still dipping your toe in the Twitter water, or you’re not really interested […]
From Lunch 2.0 » Portland Lunch 2.0 Launches on February 28th, 2008 at 9:32 am
[…] Lunch 2.0 would you have attendees identifying themselves by name and Twitter handle. Portland has embraced Twitter and has a very active group of tweeters, so I guess this makes […]
From » Twitter: 7 Silicon Forest creations that will improve your experience - Silicon Florist on March 17th, 2008 at 11:09 am
[…] Wow. Portland and the Silicon Forest are definitely a Twitter. […]
From Portland’s growing Twitter community in the Oregonian « PDX PIPELINE on June 1st, 2008 at 2:51 pm
[…] Silicon Florist (has many twitter articles actually): Portland a-Twitter, an editorial opinion […]