So I'm loving Twitter lists. I've already written here about their potential as a discovery engine for new people to follow, and about how I like the crowdsourcing of tags to describe other users (and how you learn about yourself from the tags others put on you.) Blogging and exploring today, I've been thinking about two more big issues.
Social media consultant Ari Herzog commented on an earlier post that he's using Lists to organize people he's not following. Me, too.
1) Lists allow you to dip in and out of important communities, either as a lurker - just checking out what's up, or to carve your reach further into a community you want to engage with.
The implication is that Lists are great for explorers and marketers. And for spammers.
2) Imagine you've got a product for dentists. Well, according to Listorious, there's already a handy list for you to start peppering them with @ reply messages. Get ready for it.

~ Adriel Hampton is a San Francisco public servant and host of Gov 2.0 Radio.

I’ve long argued that Twitter is very powerful for community building, with special value for generating civic engagement and pride and boosting local businesses. Knowing the benefits, and realizing them, though, is very different. Edmonton’s Twitter community has really blazed a trail, and it’s worth examining its success and drawing out a few lessons for would-be imitators.

According to #yeg enthusiasts who responded to my inquires on Twitter and my blogs, local software developer Mack Male and other influential social media enthusiasts deserve much of the credit for the tags’s success (the YEG airport code, now in common vernacular in Edmonton, was not used to describe the region before achieving Twitter popularity). Male regularly updates stats on Edmonton’s Twitter community, and in October cataloged more than 5,600 locals at least semi-active on Twitter and more than 18,000 tweets using the #yeg tag. There appear to be hundreds of Twitter users using the #yeg tag as part of their daily lives, and in-person meeutps get dozens of attendees (no small feat for Twitter communities, at least today).

Male, in a year-in-review blog post this past June, describes advocating the #yeg tag after learning at a conference that Twitter users in Calgary, AB, were organizing around their airport code, #yyc. (Twitter users in Victoria, BC, are also successfully using their airport code, #yyj).

This brings us to one of the first points that makes #yeg successful, and perhaps explains #yyc and #yyj as well: in a harsh climate isolated geographically, airport codes take on greater significance because residents are used to flying whenever they need to get somewhere else.

The #yeg buzzcronym also works because it’s easy to pronounce (rhymes with “egg”) and good for new self-referential words, says Edmonton journalist Karen Unland. Edmonton’s Twitter folk lovingly refer to one another and themselves as “yegsters” and “yeggers” (or “yeg’ers,” a construction that better utilizes Twitters search grouping function). They’ve built out the tag’s utility with features such as Edmonton traffic updates.

Edmonton’s yegsters have also built their community by taking the interaction offline, with tweetups organized around charities, political reform, open data, and other civic concerns. (Here’s a short video from a December tweetup benefiting the local food bank, courtesy of #yeg documentarian Jerry Aulenbach.) The hashtag unites Edmonton’s Twitter users around civic pride and involvement – even if they don’t follow each other in the traditional Twitter stream, many check up on the tag for its local flavor, discovering new connections and community in the process.

So, what is unique to Edmonton’s hashtagging that cannot be repeated elsewhere? Unique geography and a single regional airport seem important. Tourist hubs like Los Angeles, Vancouver, Los Angeles or San Francisco might simply suffer from random clutter (the SF Bay Area, where I live, is so large and full of urban and suburban density points, #sfo will likely never be much more than an airport). Jas Darrah, an Edmonton civil servant, emphasizes that adoption of #yeg was no accident and required key influencers actively promoting and training on its use. That included local press, institutions and government.

So, where might #yeg’s success be replicated? In the U.S., I’d suggest cities with significant populations and semi-isolated geography: Spokane, WA (GEG); Portland, OR (PDX); Bakersfield, CA (BFL); Tucson, AZ (TUS); Albequerque, NM (ABQ); Colorado Springs, CO (COS); Wichita, KS (ICT); Tulsa, OK (TUL); Pittsburgh, PA (PIT). Due to the aforementioned pronounceability factor, GEG, COS, TUL, and PIT gain an edge.

Let’s get this party started!

Check out photos and video from the December 2009 #yeg tweetup.

~ Adriel Hampton is a San Francisco public servant and host of the Gov 2.0 Radio podcast.

I like Twitter Lists, a lot. Since their inception, I've been slowly adding to groups that I think are pretty good uses of the tool. I've also been added to a good number. But what strikes me is that out of all the public lists out there, very few people are following lists compiled by others.
Only five of the lists I'm on have more than 50 followers - compilations by Cheth, Alonis, Tweetprogress (automated list), BuzzEdition, and Kim. Of the top lists on Listorious.com (great site, by the way), only 25 have more than 1,000 followers.
I've written a fair bit about why I like lists, but these low numbers show that few have the free attention to click and follow lists compiled by others, let alone track those streams. Social pro Chris Brogan wrote recently about how sometimes it looks from outside like he's chilling out, but he's really working. That's what I think about Twitter for meaningful use - you get out of it what you put in. Lists are a great tool, but you've got to work them.

~ Adriel Hampton is a San Francisco public servant and host of the Gov 2.0 Radio podcast. Follow him on Twitter @adrielhampton.

Most of what I’m doing on Twitter on a daily basis is working to build community. I’ve also got several other places where I’m doing similar things, but Twitter is definitely the largest pool where I reach out to new people to grow my personal network and evangelize a vision for government reform through social and collaborative technologies (Government 2.0).

Consistently working on a large and closely connected personal Twitter network also helps when I have a need, like when I was trying to help a friend find a marrow donor for his sick daughter a few months back. A point I make frequently is that you always want to build your network before you really need it.

So, today I was doing some pruning of the folks I follow on Twitter. This can be tedious work, but it’s important to my networking efforts. I try to follow back most accounts that follow me, as long as they look like they have live people or organizations behind them. Plenty slip through the cracks, though, and I begin find my feed a bit overrun with people using FriendFeed, Facebook and a slew of other services to pipe content to Twitter with zero interaction there. Unless it’s content highly useful to me – like feeds from a few blogs and news agencies – I generally unfollow those sorts of accounts.

Cutting loose spammy and dead accounts
During this exercise, I also notice two kinds of accounts from people who are obviously trying to use Twitter as a networking tool, but are going astray. There are the accounts obviously auto-following people (look for 1-to-1 follower-following ratios) and having little luck at engagement, and then there are those who’ve simply stopped tweeting.

Reviewing these accounts, it’s often clear that they had purpose in getting started, whether to tweet at a conference, to promote their business, or simple to build that network before it’s needed. Many of the folks who stop tweeting don’t say why, but enough do that I’m guessing it’s because they simple aren’t getting the kind of engagement they were promised or expecting. Sometimes they’re discouraged because they’ve got hundreds of Twitter followers but only a few of those click on the links they share.

Strategic networking
My advice for networking on Twitter – and I believe the informational networking there is tremendously valuable – is to be strategic in how you build out your community. For example, if you’re trying to market SEO services, and sign up for a service that auto-follows anyone who tweets the words “social media,” you’ve totally missed any sort of practical audience. Sure, you can all retweet each others’ links and tidbits of wisdom, and yes, that may increase your personal SEO (which is one of the few good reasons to crank out content on Twitter without and personal engagement). But it’s not likely to get you customers. What if instead you identified local businesses and Chamber of Commerce members engaging on Twitter who might be interested in your services? Start interacting with them; build a relationship that will lead to real business.

If you’re the conferencegoer, figure out what Twitter hashtag people are using to tweet about the event, and make connections before, during and after by merging your Twitter and offline networking. Chances are, Twitter connections established there will continue due to shared interest or profession.

Government 2.0
Twitter has been an extremely valuable tool for the Government 2.0 movement. Last week, Gov 2.0 consultant Maxine Teller commented on why she thinks it’s important that Twitter is hiring a government liaison, explaining how Mark Drapeau convinced her to start using Twitter actively in 2008 after she’d stopped:

The whole reason that you and I were jazzed about Twitter back then was because it was – and still is – a great way for us to find and connect with like-minded folks who believe – and are using – emerging tools and technologies enable us to more efficiently and effectively achieve our government missions.

To repeat the mantra that we've all chanted in our Gov 2.0 conference and event presentations umpteen times, Gov 2.0 (despite its software release naming convention) is not about the tools and technologies; it's about the collaborative interactions, innovative thinking, and revolutionary approaches that these tools and technologies catalyze and enable.

In late 2009, Gartner consultant Andrea DiMaio published a research noted defining Government 2.0 as “the use of IT to socialize and commoditize government services, processes and data.” His definition is one of the most solid and comprehensive I’ve seen, and it encapsulates many of the reasons social technologies are important to other businesses sectors as well:

The socialization of information has multiple facets (government to citizens, citizens to government and government to government) and the boundaries between these facets are increasingly blurred. The next step will be the socialization of services and processes by engaging individuals and communities to perform part of existing government processes or transform them by leveraging external data and applications.

Commoditization – which has already started with consolidation and shared services to reduce the diversity of infrastructure and horizontal application – will gradually move toward services and business processes.

Government 2.0 has seven main characteristics:

    * It is citizen-driven.

    * It is employee-centric.

    * It keeps evolving.

    * It is transformational.

    * It requires a blend of planning and nurturing.

    * It needs Pattern-Based Strategy capabilities.

    * It calls for a new management style.

Food for thought.

Resources:

Twitter Strategy for Agencies and Causes

Why and How: Local Twitter Lists

Government 2.0: A Gartner Definition

Drapeau: Government 2.0 Movement Seemingly Passes by Twitter, Inc.

I got thinking again this week about one of my favorite Gov 2.0 practitioners, the EPA's Jeffrey Levy.
Levy is important not just because he's one of the nicest folks in Gov 2.0, which he is, but because he's making real strides in creating road maps for integration of social media into the practice of government. One of his contribution is the short mantra, "Mission! Tools! Metrics! Teach!"
You can read Levy's thoughts on these four points at his blog, Government 2.0 Beta. Whatever your agency or charge, these four points are great to build flesh around. While everybody is hot for Facebook and Twitter, picking tools without looking at mission is recipe for short-lived success.
Are you a small town or local agency? Perhaps a Ning network is what you're looking for, or a targeted Twitter outreach strategy using something like LocaFollow. Looking for collaboration in a field of practice? GovLoop groups might hold the key. Creating documents or strategy with a far-flung team? Maybe you want PBWorks, WetPaint or MixedInk.
Metrics will also be specific to your mission. I'll take ten team members working effectively on a multi-pronged outreach strategy over 500 Facebook fans any day. Also consider the New York Times, which recently created Twitter lists for breaking news stories, then dismantled them when the real-time version of the stories quieted down.
Finally, as the Social Media Club's mission statement goes, "If you get it, share it." Follow the lead of folks like Levy, who created a simple blog for sharing the stories of what works and what doesn't.
Mission! Tools! Metrics! Teach!

~ Adriel Hampton is a San Francisco public servant and host of the Gov 2.0 Radio podcast.

This is a quick ramble about time, and about some favorite Twitter tools.
First, time. I know that people use different social tools in different ways. However, I'll always fight for two-way communication when that's what the tool enables. That's also because it's offensive when someone wants to give you all their ideas and thoughts, but doesn't respond to you on their channel, whether that's Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, a blog, whatever. That's me, and I'm sure there are plenty of other opinions out there.
To consider - a Golden Rule for the social Web: Respect others' time as you would have others respect your time.
Another one about me - I actively seek to engage with and increase my networks, and to balance that with my family and many other concerns, some of them much more important than the network. I also aim to respond to people quickly and directly - I'm not real fond of phone calls, or of e-mails (for first point of contact), but if you tweet me, I'll usually get back within in a few hours.
Using Twitter tools to manage networks and productive time: three tools I'm very fond of these days are TweepleML, which enables one-click follow for lists of people (please load more of yours, it's a little tilted toward spammy mutual-follow schemes right now); TheTwitCleaner, which cleans up spammers from the list of folks you're following; and, MyTweeple, an oldy and goody, which I use for identifying and pruning non-mutual follows.
What are you thinking about time and Twitter tools these days?

~ Adriel Hampton is a San Francisco public servant and producer of the Gov 2.0 Radio podcast.