Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » twitter

Twitter is a Mall

jstuart — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:19:37 +0000

Hamilton Stephanie Ross from York University and Peter Sawchuck from University of Toronto had invited me to be the first speaker to discuss organizing with a group of academics and activists coming together on a 5-year project called APCOL: Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning, a collaborative effort to evaluate how organizations approach issues and campaigns and use popular education. The project is fascinating and it will be interesting to see how it progresses and what conclusions it draws over the years, but right now it was interesting for the discussion it allowed about organizing and the challenges before us.

Let me share just one piece of the richness of the exchange initiated by a caution and comment by one participant, Jesse Hirsh, when we wandered into the area of whether or not new social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter might play a role in popular education for members and leadership development in mass-based organizations. Hirsh had seen a poster for the discussion and popped in to see what it was all about, but after introducing himself as someone who worried and thought about these issues, as many of us do, indicated his skepticism about the tools. He started making his point by noting how difficult it had been for organizations and activists to get access to the modern flashpoints of concentration like malls. We laughed at the times we had all tried, been turned away, arrested, and what not. He then observed sharply that “Twitter is a mall!”

Without explaining he had made his point. Twitter is a huge mass of blurbs and belches of words and information streamed along a vast aisle where we walk and run or turn away in dismay unable to figure out whether to go in and shop or keep walking and gawking. Learning to use such a tool to actually organize poses challenges and even more so figuring out a way to jump into the torrent and vastness of this mall-like world is something that none of us have grasped successfully.

Worse, we have not even really figured out how to make it a two-way or multiple communication tool. Comments on Facebook at least are a sign of life in the universe. The twitter-verse is still mainly small shouts without much recognition of what is being heard much less how to move forward and participate.

Note to self: much work to be done!

McAllen, Shanghai, and Twitter

jstuart — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:20:59 +0000

New Orleans Sometimes, but not all that often, I get to say, “Hey! You heard it first here!” This is one of those days. Today’s NYT, President Obama is reportedly all up in everyone’s face in the White House about whether or not they have read the New Yorker story on why the frick are the healthcare costs so high in McAllen “poor-as-dirt” Texas. He’s arguing that this proves the pudding on why we desperately have to have a national healthcare solution. Thanks for reading the blog, Mr. President! Next time, go ahead and write a comment rather than embarrassing your staff in the big house.

In New Orleans we have another phenomenon that has relaxed a city that is frankly known for being laid back and relaxed. Mayor C. Ray Nagin is in his 2^nd or 3^rd day of swine flu quarantine in Shanghai, China, and the proud citizens of New Orleans are pretty comfortable in not feeling we are missing much of anything. Sympathy cards are being sent, but it turns out that they are going to the city officials in Shanghai. There’s talk about a prisoner exchange. We will have to follow this, but at a distance of course.

A report from BBC news on a Harvard study finds that despite the huge recent growth on Twitter, most tweet-peeps are sending out one message and then letting it go at that. Their stats say that 10% of the peeps are pushing out 90% of the tweets. Turns out those other social networking sites, like Facebook, have 10% putting out 30% of the content. The study believes that Twitter is more of a “communications” tool than a social networking tool. Men are less likely to following women, than the other way around even though more than half of tweet-peeps are women, they say because there are no pictures and stuff. 10M is now the tweet-peep number. I find this all very interesting, though right this minute I might have trouble convincing you, so I’m going to just put this out there and be back at you later on this.

Twitter Tutorial

wade — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:45:21 +0000

Santiago   Katia Soriano, Ercilia Sahores and myself jumped out early to drive to Santo Domingo to meet with the Catholic Relief Service to see what it would take to build a partnership. We got back mid-afternoon to catch up with a “get to know you” session that the leaders had run along with Judy Duncan and the rest of the staff. We then plowed into the meeting again to tighten down plans and programs for ACORN International.
   The highlight was a discussion facilitated by Josh Stuart from ACORN Canada on how ACORN International should use Facebook and Twitter. Our heads were spinning.
   Bottom line, number 1:   we are becoming fans! And, if you don’t know what we mean, you will see when we ask you to become fans of ACORN International.
   Bottom line, number 2:    We are all going on twitter so we can keep up and follow the work of all of the organizers around the globe in a cheap and easy fashion. Be there or be square!
   Turned out that Twitter is already wildly popular according the organizers in the Dominican Republic, but it also seems that is because the porners are sending web links. Hmmm. Someone got there first, but we’re going to catch up.