Yesterday marked our fourth edition of Thinkup App Talks, a growing community I'm proud to be a part of. Among the core developers are two people I've followed for a while, Gina Trapani @GinaTrapani and Andy Baio @waxpancake, but there are many others I've met in the past few months who are bright, interesting, diverse people, excited to be a part of this effort. We all gather on the IRC channel #thinkup on irc.freenode.net which you can join via the web at http://lnx.so/tuirc.

Thinkup is an application that is installed on a server. Thinkup has a plugin architecture which will allow many new possibilities, but the first and most basic thing Thinkup does is monitor your Twitter feed, saving all posts you make. It then finds mentions of you and replies, calculates and displays interesting statistics about following and follower numbers and how they vary over time. Thinkup also has displays of posted photos, Google Maps display of replier locations and retweets and much more. There is a Facebook plugin that will follow activity on multiple Facebook pages of which you are a fan. If you are a fervent user of Twitter, be sure to take a look!

Information on how to install, configure and run Thinkup is here. There is a plan brewing to offer hosted Thinkup, which is in my opinion, a very good idea for those who don't run servers. This is the equivalent of using Wordpress.com for your blog. All the setup, management, housekeeping, updates, etc. are taking care of by this managed system. Here is our latest chat with Gina and Thinkup Community:

Thinkup App Talks, April Edition by Thinkup

More interesting than friend and follower numbers are join date, the number of posts and the number of lists. For perspective, I've added some bloggers who probably don't answer to the name 'critic'. Although I've never met Twitter co-creator Jack Dorsey, who is "coming back"  to the head of the line as Twitter "product boss", I did talk to him on the phone in early 2007, and he agreed to help us with our Kiva.org initiative by promoting it on Twitter's front page. Thanks Jack, you're awesome!

The first seven wine personalities (beginning with the king, "The Vee") are all from North America. The UK component, led by Jane Anson and Jamie Goode got on the train about 1 year later. Toward the end of 2009, over 3 1/2 years after the first tweet, two and a half years after Gary Vaynerchuck, France, one of the foremost wine producing nations, wakes up to Twitter. Finally, 4 1/2 years after the first tweet, 3 1/2 after The Vee, French critic Monsieur Michel Bettane joined Twitter.

First Tweet ever:

@jack (Jack Dorsey) Twitter: 2006-03-21  Posts: 9635 Listed: 12001

 @LastGlass (Randulo Bordeaux) Twitter: 2006-10-27 Posts: 2348 Listed: 12

@randulo (Randulo Bordeaux) Twitter: 2007-03-17 Posts: 11547 Listed: 172

North American Beginnings

@garyvee (Gary Vaynerchuk)  Twitter: 2007-05-04 Posts: 45079 Listed: 13210

@1WineDude (Joe Roberts)  Twitter: 2007-12-15  Posts: 24300 Listed: 608

@drvino (Dr Vino)  Twitter: 2008-03-21 Posts: 4934 Listed: 816

@RemyCharest (Rémy Charest)  Twitter: 2008-06-01 fr Quebec, Quebec Posts: 19995 Listed: 288

@NatalieMacLean (NatalieMacLean)  Twitter: 2008-11-07  Posts: 9065 Listed: 1116

@alicefeiring (alicefeiring)  Twitter: 2008-11-10  Posts: 3808 Listed: 238

@Burghound (Burghound Report)  Twitter: 2008-11-16  Posts: 179 Listed: 144

Great Britain arrives..., then more Yanks

@newbordeaux (jane anson)  Twitter: 2008-11-28 Posts: 2819 Listed: 147

@jamiegoode (Jamie Goode) Twitter: 2009-01-27 Posts: 4341 Listed: 366

@Decanter (Decanter)  Twitter: 2009-02-26  Posts: 2329 Listed: 794

@ericasimov (Eric Asimov)  Twitter: 2009-03-30  Posts: 2569 Listed: 803

@ozclarke (Oz Clarke)  Twitter: 2009-04-01 Posts: 245 Listed: 452

@WineSpectator (Wine Spectator .com)  Twitter: 2009-04-27 Posts: 2965 Listed: 1276

@EmmanuelDelmas (Sommelier) Twitter: 2009-04-30 Posts: 2642 Listed: 75 (Early for France)

@antrose33 (Anthony Rose) Twitter: 2009-08-13 en London, UK Posts: 665 Listed: 86

@nealmartin (Neal Martin) Twitter: 2009-09-23 Posts: 1105 Listed: 198

@JancisRobinson (Jancis Robinson)  Twitter: 2009-05-08 Posts: 2946 Listed: 1792

@JamesSuckling (James Suckling)  Twitter: 2009-04-23  Posts: 3920 Listed: 440

More France

@BourgogneLive (Bourgogne-Live) Twitter: 2009-11-28 Posts: 10903 Listed: 232

@Vindicateur (Le Guide) Twitter: 2009-12-12 fr  Posts: 1881 Listed: 61

and, finally...

@RobertMParkerJr (Robert M Parker, Jr)  Twitter: 2009-12-22  Posts: 805 Listed: 911

I looked for Michel Bettane who was recently known as @LeGrandTasting but that page doesn't exist anymore.

@BettaneDesseauv (Bettane et Desseauve) Twitter: 2010-11-22 Posts: 24 Listed: 3

I had a phone meeting set up with a new member of an agency's team, someone I've never met. After the obligatory Google, following the Linkedin profile link gave me the official bio and career info. But it wasn't until I looked up his Twitter account that I got to the more human factors. I saw that he joined Twitter a relatively short time ago, that he has posted a few hundred times since then, that he is on a small number of lists, has a small number of friends and even smaller number of followers, and his last post was two weeks ago. This would be a typical example of the average "ham sandwich" Twitter user, but since he's in Internet technology and has been for years, it surprised me. It was even more enlightening to look at the posts, absorb the interests, the level of acumen (how links are shared, use of @, RT, via), the choice of retweets and people he follows. Looking at this, you almost know the person, or at least one or two facets of the personality.

As opposed to Facebook, which will not be so revealing unless you "friend" the person, Twitter gives you a lot of the essentials of "knowing" someone without meeting them, without friending them, and without them knowing you looked at it at all.

When people try to proselytize me in the street, I find it not only annoying, but insulting. It's like saying, "since you're not capable of doing your own thinking, I'm telling you what the Truth really is." The relationship to automatic messages is this. Here's the typical DM when you follow someone:

"Hey $screen_name, great to connect! You might enjoy reading my blog, too at http://douchebagblog.com"

So basically, this says, "You followed me, but I guess you're not sufficiently competent to have looked at my Twitter profile for this URL and other info, so I'm going to send you a link, which you may also get by email."

Twitter mentions that "Many Twitter users receive email notifications when someone follows their account or check out the profiles of new followers to see if they share common interests." This isn't practical if your account is very active so often people automate replies to follows. Occasionally, one comes through that is original enough to actually evoke a laugh or some admiration, but most are dismally lame or even spammy.

The solution? You aren't too busy to actually write to a follower you care about to thank them personally, are you? And for those who aren't of particular interest, there's no need to thank them or comment. Do your research, it will pay off. And stop with the auto DMs!

I think for me it happened around 1977. I was living in L.A. at that time, and since I had been interested in amateur radio as a kid, I found out there was a whole social network out there on VHF and UHF repeaters in the L.A. Basin, mountains and valleys. People used to check in all day, just like Twitter or Facebook, and meet up in person all over the area. In fact, I met a few women back in the day. One of them went on to become a radio operator on an Arco ship. I wonder if she's still working for an oil company? Her passport said, "Occupaton: Seaman", which made her (and us) laugh.

Speaking of L.A. reminds me of a moment down there in 1993. I was down in Orange County somewhere, we were recording What Kind of World with Larry Taylor who was playing with Tom Waits at the time, and the drummer from Waits' band whose name escapes me for the moment. Larry and I were staying in a motel, on the PCH, I think and there was some slow traffic going by even in the middle of the night. Then came a van with a 1,000 watt boom box system playing at 11. What's funny is, it was playing opera music. Only in L.A. would you get this!

Twenty years after my first experience with L.A. social networking, in 1987, I was using a tool at the office daily that I didn't understand at all, called the Internet. You typed some commands on a Unix console and were copying or fetching files between France and the USA at a rate so slow it took all day for source code archives, which is all text.

In 2006, I heard about this crazy new thing called Twitter, which mostly did what my Chez DiDi site was doing ten years before, a kind of chat on  a regular HTML web site. In those days (only 4 years ago!) you could call the guys from Twitter on their cells, so I did that early in 2007 and Jack was nice enough to put our Kiva Talkathon on the front page of Twitter for a week before it happened. Yes, we were  a trending topic! But how many people were on Twitter 3 years ago? A hundred thousand? Maybe less?

In 2007 I joined Facebook, although I also left it in 2007. At that time you got the "you can come back anytime" and the answer to how to delete an account was "you can't". That's right, I had to argue via email for two weeks with someone over there until they promised to delete my account and all associated data. Not that there was much of that, since I didn't post much. I don't use Facebook except on behalf of other people, and every time I get on the site I marvel at how bad it is as a web site. Searching is confused and works poorly, finding hard info on dealing with various problems is hard.

A lot has happened since 1997, but the basic concepts of social networks haven't changed and probably never will. Note that because radio waves travel at the speed of light, communication on those social networks was faster in 1997 than it is now.

I'll use myself as an example in this, but this expresses my own philosophy.

Like most of the billions of humans on the planet, I have some unique aspects, good and bad. I've lived half my life in the USA, half in Europe. I have had numerous careers in music, tech, PR, radiotelephony, voip and I've hung out with a lot of different types of people, not just one crowd. I try to curate links I find of interest and post them when I feel they are appropriate. I retweet, not to curry favor, but to reinforce things freinds have posted. I usually keep four-letter words at bay on Twitter even though those who know me have heard me say them all the time.

Twitter is a cocktail party. Walk around, mingle, but walk away from conversations or people that don't engage your interest.

photo: MediaBistro

So, follow me if you are interested in what I have to say, based on your interests.

You should periodically look at those you follow and remove people who never catch or retain your interest. There is no stigma to someone you stop following, even though there are tools for the insecure to know the exact Tweet before someone unfollows you. Was it that tuna pizza with Croze Hermitage that made you unfollow? Or the security alert about ATM hacking? If I post about food, it won't be a ham sandwich. If I post about wine, it will usually be about one that surprised me. If I post about sex... well I probably won't. And religion is in the heart, not to be bandied about on a lightweight medium with 140 characters to express an idea.

Unfollow me if:

- I start systematically notifying the world of my location

- I use any service that auto-posts something you don't care about (like a new avatar or a wine I drank) evey time I use it

- my stream is nothing but links to my own sites

- I try to sell you something

- I shill for a contest to win something I could easily afford

- I use sponsored links that insert ads at the top for a commission paid to me

- I direct-message you with a generic thanks for the follow

- I insult or disrespect any individual or group publicly (does not include companies, who so often deserve to be publically berated)

- anything I say offends you deeply (politics, religion, sex, Ebay, Orange)

- you lose interest in what I'm saying for any reason

Make sense?

Now get outta here, I mean it! (Bill Murray, SNL)

As a kid, I was ostracized and hung out with other "misfits" of
society. Several of these have gone on to do pretty big things, like
signing Prince to his first contract, producing and recording big
names in the music business, founding important and flourishing tech
companies to name a few. All of us share one thing, we didn't follow
the crowd and so were classified (in high school) as uncool nerds.

Decades later, what comes out clearly is that the nerds have mostly
accomplished interesting and sometime important things, where the
followers who dressed in the latest fashion (remembering my cuffless
pants makes me squirm a little) and were so cool have mostly not done
much. It's important to note in passing that a lot of people who were
NOT ostracized and who were in fact pretty popular also went on to do
great things, but most important to my point is, they weren't above
talking to the likes of us nor did they make fun of anyone.

Humanity will always be full of followers, so many pilot fish around
the leaders, whether this is in the FriendFeed echo chamber, the
Twittersphere or just in high school. If you haven't got the qualities
to dare to differ, you probably won't do as well in life as those who
do. Although I admire Godin's Tribe thing, I also caution people that
the whole thing can also be seen as a pyramid scheme where someone has
to pay (follow) and someone has to lead (be followed).

Pilot fish photo from http://bilder.peter-koelbl.de

Thilo Salmon, co-founder and CEO of Sipgate.com was out guest last  Friday on The Voip Users Conference. Even if you are not a telephony  geek, you will appreciate several aspects of this story.
 
Sipgate has been around for several years, first in Germany then in the UK. They provide free phone numbers which we VoIP junkies refer to as DID, or Direct Inward Dialing. For example, if you know how to play with SIP, you can direct these free numbers to your own pbx or to a SIP phone. Here's how this matters to you, geek or not.
 
First, it's interesting how I happened to reach Thilo (pronounced "Tee-low", a thousand pardons to him for my pronouncing it wrong and thanks to John Todd for correcting me). I just happened to see "Sipgate" on Twitter. Although I don't know who that was (surely it
 wasn't Thilo Tweeting, was it?) with the exchange of about 300 characters, we had an appointment to speak live on our conference on Friday. So, interesting point number one, meeting Sipgate on Twitter was like being introduced to Sipgate's co-founder and CEO at a party, only no trees died to create business cards. I have never had a business card, by the way.
 
Second, the Sipgate people have done their homework. They have been around longer than Google Voice and longer than Grand Central which was the small outfit that became Google Voice. They offer, like GV, a free incoming phone number in the USA. Like GV, they say they may be looking into other areas of the world... someday. Also like GV, you can forward the number to one or more other numbers so your one phone number will ring both your cell and your home number, for example.
 
What Google doesn't do without some messing about, is allow an easy hookup to the wonderful world of a nice SIP phone. A SIP phone is a telephone that, rather than plugging in to a phone line, is connected to the Internet. They can have multiple lines so they can be connected to multiple services. Mine has six lines, connected to Sipgate, Gizmo/Google, OnSIP.com hosted pbx and toll free number, our French hosted pbx and a colleague's SIP phone in the UK. What that means is that I can get calls on an 800 number in the USA, several French numbers (main number, my direct line), my Sipgate number, etc.
 
The "pbx" adds things like voicemail, open hours, fax if you still live in the 90's and lots of other features.
 
It isn't the "free" part that I care about, or even the low rates of OnSIP or Sipgate, it's the flexibility. There's only one thing missing
 in telephony today, and that's total mobility without roaming charges. In other words, a single, international number that anyone can call for a nominal rate (equivalent to a local call) and reach you where ever you are in the developed world. It would ring your cell and any other phone you'd care to.

Typical Polycom SIP phone.

If you are interested in finding out more about SIP or VoIP or anything telephony related and how it can make a difference to your business or your life, join us some Friday and say hello live: http://vuc.me

I love doing live conferences. The ones I do are available as podcasts
through Talkshoe and can be downloaded, but I prefer the live part.
Plus, because I know they can be downloaded, I tend to want to edit
them to sound a little less idiotic. Fortunately, I'm also very lazy,
so I rarely edit unless something happens that needs to be rearranged.
Last week, Tom Cannavan got cut off for a bit and I did edit and
reorder things, removing the wait for him to call back.
 
Two years ago, Talkshoe CEO Dave Nelsen worked with me on producing
the first live 24 hour Kivathon, which was a terrific success,
bringing a lot of awareness to what was then not very well-known.
Since that time, Kiva has become so successful, you literally have to
wait in line to loan! Oprah and Bill Clinton's book are largely to
thank for that. Dave and I both very much enjoyed the fact that we
were able to have fun and pay back some of the amazing and wonderful
things the Internet has brought us.
 
Anyway, talking with a few friends about the whole Talkshoe thing made
me go take a look at the statistics for the conferences and I was a
little surprised to see that for the New Wine Consumer, which has few
live participants, the average download number for a particular
session is around 800. This is a small number compared to popular tech
casts like TWIT, where at least 200,000 people are hearing it each week. On
the other hand, those 800 unique IP downloads measured by Talkshoe are
people who actually listen to the recordings. We know that to be
motivated enough to click on listen or download, people are interested
in the subject on some level, whether professional or amateur.
Remember, those page views you see for your blog have plenty of chaff
with the wheat, lots of robots, lots of people wandered there by
accident but are not interested, lots of everything but your target
audience.
 
For the VoIP Users Conference (running 2 years since March 2007) we
have a highly focused group with an average of 30 live callers each
week. When we had Asterisk creator Mark Spencer on and simulcast in
video, we had about 100 live. I also did a live session with Chris
Brogan for his Grasshoppers initiative and there too we had over 100
people. The conference has not one but several sponsors.
 
Advertisers haven't come around in droves yet to understand the
podcast paradigm, although Leo Laporte has more than proven its value.
When a site is mentioned live on TWIT, it usually brings down the
server almost immediately.
 
I think we are still waiting for the easy way to join the
conversation. Twitter proves that "if you build it easy, they will
come". I am trying various methods to allow Skype with its millions of
users to call in to our conferences. One of these days I will find a
way to make this work reliably. If, in the meantime the applications
for iPhone etc begin to work well, things like Gizmo5 and iPhone Skype
app, the whole thing may be an enabler. If and when this happens, I
will be looking for communities to help make use of this technology
and I have the experience and ideas to make it work, I hope.

Incidentally, speaking of Gizmo and Skype, Michael Robertson is our guest
this Friday to talk about Gizmo5 and OpenSky.

At the end of a hard day, we like to look at 100% fantasy from the heavy Millenium to the light and airy The Pretender. What made me think of the Pretender just now was the opening sequence:

There are Pretenders among us. Geniuses with the ability to become anyone they want to be.

You don't need to be a genius to invent yourself on Twitter, but a little creativity goes a long way. I've been reading through countless 140-character bios of Twitter users, and it's pretty amazing what you find. The Pretender opening line popped into my head while reading some them. My own profile is pretty pedestrian, basically a list of my interests. What is fascinating is how people re-invent themselves in the mini bios.
 
I wonder if in a few years there will be psychology majors pumping out doctorates about how people fashion their personae on social networks (regardless of which social networks survive). [By the way, it's pretty amazing that a spell checker in my mail client knew the plural of persona, don't you think?]
 
How's Second Life doing? I have the impression it's faltering. Are companies leaving? Talk about Pretenders though, that's the place to invent yourself from A to Z. Back to Twitter, less is more is definitely true of much great art, but are all artists good at minimalism?
 
Here are a few comments I have about Twitter:
 
I don't care how many people are following me or how many read this Posterous series nor do I care how many people follow the people I follow. What I care about is the quality of connectivity. Can we have a short conversation of some kind? I just had three or four this morning. Actual thoughts and ideas were exchanged. The numbers are only important for the Pretenders among us.
 
If you have SEO, diva, expert and other like words in your bio, I know you are not of interest to me. You see, you are no better or worse than me or anyone else on Twitter. Calling yourself a diva or an expert marks you as a one of the Pretenders among us. My step mom used to say, "He who says, doesn't know. He who knows, doesn't say." You're one in a sea of Pretenders, humility and sincerity are in order.
 
When you auto-DM followers with "Check out my site" you are being like the people that come up to you on the street and try to talk you into their religion. This is an insult, in the one case because the religious claim to have a monopoly on the Truth and on the other because I've been on the Internet long enough to find your site if I'm interested. The auto-DM thing comes from the Pretenders among us.
 
You can be a successful Pretender on Twitter, but you won't be among me for long.