Twitter as a communication research tool

For the last few weeks, I've been playing with twitter and finding interesting-to-me tweets. The observable behavior that indicates "interesting-to-me" is if I bother to tweet about it. To manage learning observable behavior is more reliable than speech acts, either in the form of standardized tests or traditional surveys.

From time to time, it's also interesting-to-me to look over my tweets. 140 characters might turn out to be a set of useful "dots." I would call them memes. What I'm thinking is that demography + genetics + mimetics may be just the right lens to reveal the mechanisms of a communication ecology.

The hypothesis being tested:
Twitterstreams published in print with Smart QR are a useful tool for learning.

So far, it's working for me. But that doesn't mean it's going to work for anyone else. Until some real testing is done in the field it's only an educated guess based on my experience and reading. It's Nothing more.

At any rate, here's some "dots" -memes- in the world of Print.

"Sony seems like the bst hope for a strong Amazon altrntv (Plastic Logic is a fairly prmsng dark horse)" via @raduboncea http://bit.ly/RStuY

The point is that the ereader market is now really heating up. My opinion is that it will drive print on demand versions of those same books. Real readers have always been a small market. As that market grows, the demand of printed books will grow. It's confusing because we always had the reader/textbook market to ourselves. But a smaller piece of a growing market is ok.

"When you do something by heart, it bypasses some of the common sense processing" Seth's Blog http://bit.ly/4ejJGa

This is another view on the "too busy, being busy" problem. When you are too busy, being busy you tend to make decisions from the heart without engaging the brain.

1.
ToughLoveforX RT @risoprinter RISO blog: Leveraging Twitter for your printing business http://ow.ly/15LFIj
2.
from Risoprinter @ToughLoveforX Thanks for the blog post and thanks for the Follow. Looking forward to saying hello at Print '09 (RISO booth #1263)
3.
ToughLoveforX @risoprinter no thx necessary. If it's intrstng-2-me, I blog it. Riso is now quite intrstng-2-me. Won't be in Chicago. I'll follow @WTT.com

I did a post about Riso here yesterday. The exchanges above happened within a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon. What I think I'm seeing from Riso is a level of responsiveness and creativity that I think is going to give the other globals a real run for their money. The video at their YouTube channel was very impressive-to-me.

To be clear, I an NOT fishing for responses. Nor do I really care about building a "following" or creating a "brand." I care about fixing high school education at the bottom of the pyramid. To all my friends in the industry who have known me for many years, no fooling around, my day job is now managing my IRA.

In the service of trying to figure out when interesting-to-me, is interesting-to-someone else, here are the items that caught someone's attention and were "good enough" interesting to RT. If other people thought they were interesting, an unexpected pattern might emerge from these.

The RTs since August 23, 2009

BrentKPohlmanRT @ToughLoveforX: RT @BrentKPohlman @theindependent http://bit.ly/TOe86 Very cool Newspaper using Twitter! " #clickableprint Thanks 4 RT

dcarliRT @ToughLoveforX NatGeo's Responsible Brand www.bit.ly/F0J9R NatGeo+#CGX+#HP doing personalized #printernet publishing www.bit.ly/136L07

good_educationRT @ToughLoveforX RT@DPendletonSC "I am trying to look at recommendd educational lnks frm TweetDeck, but EVERYTHING is blocked fro ...

AugmentedAdvertRT: RT @ToughLoveforX #Clickableprint = connecting Print to anywhere, anytime video using Smart #QR codes. Sm.. http://bit.ly/10tVzf

qrpowerRT @ToughLoveforX #Clickableprint = connecting Print to anywhere, anytime video using Smart #QR codes. Smart #QR.. http://bit.ly/3iBNNo

twittor_groupsRT @ToughLoveforX "Doctors, health care groups use Twitter to reach public http://bit.ly/pMJFy (via @Twittor_Groups) Me: twitterstr ...

qrpowerRT @ToughLoveforX Note: "A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture." = read free/pay for print. Imagine if.. http://bit.ly/xYQvO

s_dunnGreat Teacher Resource RT @ToughLoveforX: "These Twitter feeds come from classroom teachers offering great advice .." http://bit.ly/CU7KP

qrpowerRT @ToughLoveforX New blog post: The Economist does an article on 2D. It's not just #QR. It's Data Matrix + Ezco.. http://bit.ly/18jwmq

katagana@ToughLoveforX great isn't it? Biomimicry is the way of the future!