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Portland a-Twitter, an editorial opinion

Rick Turoczy on January 4, 2008

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.

  1. Register for an account at Twitter
  2. 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?

  1. Log into your shiny new Twitter account
  2. Click on the folks’ links above
  3. 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:

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.

Published by Rick Turoczy

More than mildly obsessed with the Portland startup community. Founder and editor at Silicon Florist. Cofounder and general manager at PIE. Follow me on Twitter: @turoczy

  1. Kelley Tirk January 17, 2013 at 5:54 pm

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  2. Debbie April 7, 2009 at 9:26 pm

    I’m new to Portland (technically I still live in Chicago!) but the tech scene here seems to be kickin’! Thanks so much for all the suggested follows!
    @debbieupper

  3. Herb February 7, 2009 at 9:39 am

    Nice Post. A month or so ago I stumbled on a great site that allowed me to search my local area for current twitter users but forgot to book mark the site. Still looking. http://www.twitter.com/portlandbroker

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  10. Jeff the Great January 7, 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!

  11. Josh Bancroft January 7, 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.

  12. Rick Turoczy January 7, 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/

  13. Jeff the Great January 6, 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!

  14. Gary Walter January 5, 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

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  16. Brett January 4, 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.

  17. Michael January 4, 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

  18. Rick Turoczy January 4, 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.

  20. Radio Gretchen January 4, 2008 at 3:36 pm

    You can follow me at http://twitter.com/radiogretchen. Having actual followers makes my paranoia a bit more justified.

  21. Paul Biggs January 4, 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

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  23. Josh Bancroft January 4, 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. 😉

  24. Jason Grigsby January 4, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    Thanks for mentioning me Rick. Now I know who to blame for my lack of productivity today! 🙂

  25. Betsy January 4, 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*.

  26. Nick January 4, 2008 at 2:04 pm

    PDX Twitter here, though I live up in Vancouver.. >_> close enough for me.

    Nick here.. http://twitter.com/Zolotkey

  27. Banana Lee Fishbones January 4, 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. (:

  28. Tinymeat™ (Mikey) January 4, 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.

  29. Dan January 4, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    Over at witigonen.com, we’ve all just decided to give twitter a go.

    twitter.com/gidyczd

  30. Eddie Awad January 4, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    Nice post. I’m also enjoying your company on Twitter.

  31. Rick Turoczy January 4, 2008 at 11:21 am

    You caught me mid-edit. You’re on there. 😉

  32. Jason January 4, 2008 at 11:17 am

    Hey, I’m interesting! can I be on your list? 🙂

    jason – twitter.com/harrisja

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