The many mediums of the Web Strategy Community (50 replies from one tweet)

I posted one Tweet on Twitter and recieved about 50 back in return. I now have a pretty good idea of how my network (my community, the web strategy community) communicates.

From who? From the pebble people. What’s a pebble? They’re often first generation adopters. they are followed by swimmers, surfers and others.

Most of the people in Twitter fall into one of those three categories, they’re early adopters, tech influencers, and what Forrester calls “creators”.

I tweeted this question: “@everyone quick, count the many tools you’ve communicated over today. Twitter, FB, blog, email (personal and work), phone, cell =7″

Two hours later, I had quite a few responses (nearly 50)

I’ve removed any private tweets (at least 5), all of the following are public. And no, this is far from the methodology at Forrester, this is just a segment of MY network. No, I’m not going to use this information in any other way than to understand how my network of pebbles works. Since it’s just my network, this is completely biased.

It makes no sense for me to tally or average them as people counted the same version of tools multiple times. What’s clear is that we are communicating with each other using so many multiple channels. We’re easy to access, easy to find, and easy to talk to.

It’s pretty safe to estimate that between 5-7 communication mediums are being used by my community.

John McCrea who works at Plaxo suggested that a unified communications platform could fix this, but we’ve got to first ask, is it a problem?

Here’s how my community responded from my one tweet:

Mark Twomey Storagezilla @jowyang – Twitter, Blog, Email, Forums, Mobile Phone. 5

Lee Aase LeeAase @jowyang I’ve used Twitter, land line, cell, SMS, Facebook, 2 email accts, personal blog, work blog = 9

Mukund Mohan mukund @jowyang, @astrout email (gmail, work), Twitter, IM(Gtalk, Yahoo, MSN), Phone, Cell, Voice, FB, Blog, Text Messaging, WEBEX – dang

astrout astrout @jowyang — sorry, missed blog. That makes 8 or maybe 9 for me.

Wade Rockett waderockett @jowyang: 5 – email, blog, Twitter, message board, IM.

Krish krishnan @jowyang Twitter, Facebook. blog, IM, email, phone (in that order)

astrout astrout @jowyang — face2face, cell phone, voip phone, text, trillian, twitter, FB and e-mail (7 if you combine voip & cell – 8 otherwise)

GiGi iad2la @jowyang Twitter, TXT/phone, FB, AIM and MSN messenger via Trillian, GTalk, Gmail, Outlook (oh the agony)

Christian Burns™ ChristianBurns @jowyang Gmail, twitter, Jaiku, Utterz, outlook web portal, facebook, cell phone, txt msg sms, gtalk

Alex de Carvalho alexdc @jowyang GTalk, MSN, Twitter, GMail, FB, phone, cell, Flickr, Scrapblog, Orkut, Basecamp … and the ol’ fashioned face-to-face

Luis Suarez elsua @jowyang 16! Can list them if you would want to …

CSP missusP @jowyang – @CreativeSage reminded me – yes, also LinkedIn – that makes 12 today.

karl long karllong @jowyang twitter, pownce, text msg, phone, email, blog post, blog comment, message forum, FB =9 a

Jason Preston jasonp107 @jowyang twitter, AIM, e-mail, phone, cell & (plans for blog & FB!) = 5

Cathryn Hrudicka CreativeSage @jowyang: Landline ph., Twitter, Facebook, primary email, LinkedIn, Flickr, blogs, Pownce (feeds going to other socnets).

Will Pate willpate @jowyang: gmail, twitter, basecamp, highrise, aim, msn, skype, conceptshare, mobile, facebook, google docs, adium, blackberry PIN about

Kyle Flaherty kflaherty @jowyang facebook, cell, blog, twitter, email, gmail, flikr, SMS, ning=9

Doug Meacham DougMeacham @jowyang: landline, cell, blog, twitter, wk email, Yahoo Mail, GMail, Face to Face (do people still do that?), Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr=11

Tete TeteSagehen @jowyang (twitter, IM, home phone, blog, Faecbook, e-mail)

Ian Wilker iwilker @jowyang: yeesh… 8! (adium, FB, email, cell, voip, IM, twitter, blog)

Andy Beal andybeal @jowyang cell, email, twitter, facebook, IM, skype, blog = 7

Marcel LeBrun lebrun @jowyang email (2), twitter, FB, office phone, cell phone, Gtalk, MSN & BB messenger about

TedC TedC @jowyang Twitter, email, seesmic, phone, ms communicator, icq, blog = 7

Lee Odden leeodden @jowyang For me it’s: email, facebook, mybloglog, twitter, pownce, blog, linkedin, cell, landline

John McCrea johnmccrea @jowyang: work email, webmail, mobile, blog, Plaxo Pulse, Twitter, SMS. I guess that’s 7 for me, too.

Arek Dreyer arekdreyer @jowyang Twitter, email, ichat, phone = 4

TDavid TDavid @jowyang – email, IRC, blog, Twitter, phone (work+personal), Skype = 7, not ordered

Clay Newton tastybit @jowyang SMS, vmail, mobile, email, landline, twitter, Fb, blog, IM = 9

Suki_MHC05 Suki_MHC05 @jowyang “in person” and skype=9 plus all those you already listed.

CSP missusP @jowyang 11: phone, email, IM, blog, Twitter, FB, WBEx office, BBerry, fax, Ezmo, Sosius

KayDub kaydub @jowyang 5 5

Thomas Han thomashan @jowyang twitter, FB, blog, land-line, iPhone, emails (3), SMS, IMs (several platforms) = ~12

Jeff Greco jeffgreco @jowyang twitter, facebook, aim, gtalk, email (personal + work), cell, work phone, tumblelog = 9

Jeremy Pepper jspepper @jowyang – recounting, then, if you want email and IM separate (or as one, even if it’s Hotmail, GMail and corp mail)

Shashi Bellamkonda shashib @jowyang 3 email accounts, pidgin( AIM, GTalk,Yahoo IM) , phone, 2 cell phones, Twitter, Facebook, utterz, blogs, Google reader, Jaiku, Pown

Jeremy Pepper jspepper @jowyang – 5 (counting meebo as 1 for all my IM systems)

Shea Gunther sheagunther @jowyang 9 communication tools today for me- twitter, blog, FB, email, Vonage phone, cell phone, text message, Ning, StumbleUpon

Kami Huyse kamichat @jowyang I have used 10 tools: 3 e-mail accounts, Twitter, FB, SMS, Blogs (mine and others), cell phone and land line

Mike Keliher mjkeliher @jowyang …and chatting within Scrabulous within Facebook.

Evan Hamilton evanhamilton @jowyang: twitter, gmail, hotmail, outlook, cell, AIM, Messenger, iChat = 8

Jess K escapetochengdu @jowyang I have one more to add to that list: instant message (via gchat)

Christopher Gilmer chrisgilmer @jowyang 7, same set as yours.

chrisgilmer @jowyang 7, same set as yours.

Mike Keliher mjkeliher @jowyang Cell phone calls, cell phone text messages, regular phone, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, Ning site, blog comments = 8 + face to face.

Connie Reece conniereece @jowyang for me it’s 6 communication tools today

LisaBarone LisaBarone @jowyang Twitter, FB, blog, work email, home email, cell, Skype, IM, Webcast = 9. All before lunch!

Jen Cardew jencardew @jowyang 8 myspace, fb, sms, phone, email, webct (course discussion board), email, & twitter … and counting o.0

Len Edgerly LenEdgerly @jowyang – 6

Erica OGrady ericaogrady @jowyang: Twitter, Cell, Facebook, Email, Virb, Blog, GTalk = 7

Craig Cmehil ccmehil @jowyang 17 including various IM tools

Yndy:(Update) @jowyang – tools today so far? Twitter, LiveJournal, MySpace, Network54, Wordpress, cell phone, email (x4), Digg, various other boards (9?) 04:12 PM

If you weren’t in on the fun and still want to contribute, leave a comment below.

Update: I know a lot of Marketers what would be thrilled to have 5 responses to 1 tweet, or even 15, but 50? How to do it? Become part of the community, (not yelling at it) and join the conversation. The world is moving smaller, faster, and distributed, but most importantly it’s trending towards opt-in.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 6:31 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.