Speakers: Stowe Boyd, Laura Fitton, Tony Hsieh (pronounced “shy”?), Lucretia Pruitt, Erin Kotecki Vest
Lucretia is @geekmommy and moderating. Laura is @ pistachio, Tony Hseih is @zappos, Tony is @stoweboyd, Erin @queenofspain
Erin got on Twitter “by accident.” Got into conversations w/people and found followers and followed them back.
Stowe is a fan of social tools. Twitter has recharged the way he sees and feels about blogging.
Laura isn’t interested in being famous, it’s more about relationships. Pulled good feeds into her life to surround herself w/successful people. Likes the onlilne/offline connections. Now she’s a twitter consultant, “as dumb as that sounds.” “Microsharing” is a phrase she’s coined. “Work streaming” is Tony’s preferred coin.
Tony learned about it at SXSW. Used it to find parties there. Connected w/local and San Fran friends.
Kept his away friends close. Now he has 400+ employees on the tool and has twitter classes there as well. No one is forced to do it.
Q. Tony, how did you first start using twitter as a CSR tool?
A. Weren’t originally looking for customers, but they found us. Then someone suggested to give away a pair of shoes to a Twitterer and it snowballed from there.
Q. Erin: Went from mommyblogger to political blogger. How did Twitter help?
A. Twitter did help. Did some election coverage before, but Tw took it to a new level. DMC was very good about giving credit, RMC completely opposite. When she complained on Tw w/in 10 min. she got a call back.
Pet peeve: people who only tweet their blog posts. You can’t just throw up links expecting people to click. You must build trust.
Erin no longer reads her RSS, uses Tw instead. Stowe, too. Stowe uses Snacker (snackr?) for Mac.
Laura says despite her # of followers, she is not influential. When she does have something retweeted it’s b/c it’s an important topic. (TX food banks out of food, for example.) However, if she didn’t have so many followers she wouldn’t be so influential. It’s the “what makes a rectangle bigger, height or weight?”
Q. Why does Tw continue to rule w/new upstarts? (Plurk, identi.ca.)
A. Tony: Tw is convenient, simple, and everyone is there. He admits to Tw while driving! (Bad boy.) Laura: network keeps people there, as well as 3rd party apps. The fact that there’s so many mobile users bodes well for the future of Tw. “There is no right way to use Tw.” “Tw is an ecosystem, not a business.”
Some differing opinions on how to follow people. Some follow everyone (except spammers) so that they can receive dm; others can handle the feed. (Perhaps TweetDeck is the solution?)
