Many years ago, back in 1990, I was at a local book store and purchased a copy of Guy Kawasaki’s The Macintosh Way—The Art of Guerrilla Management. Many books have influenced me over the years, however, The Macintosh Way is one of only a handful of books that has changed me.
To this day, I’m not sure why the secondary title is The Art of Guerrilla Management when clearly it’s a book on product marketing. The Macintosh Way introduced a number of key concepts that I still carry with me and are now so integrated into my thinking, they’ve become a part of who I am.
- Doing the right thing, the right way
- Ask for forgiveness, not permission
- Having a passion for what you are marketing
- Identify and cater to “the cult” users or buyers in your market
- Establish and support your core group
- Empower your employees and customers to do the right thing
In 1990, I was promoting events of questionable legality—or the proper permitting—in Los Angeles. It was during this time when I met @unfreakable. He’s one of only a handful of people who I’ve been in consistent contact with since those days. @unfreakable is one of only a few close friends who remembers all the work we’d put into these events, how we’d promote them, and how we’d organize them with the help and support of our friends and followers.
Last Fall, I had mentioned to @unfreakable that I was excited to see Guy Kawasaki posting on Twitter and how Guy Kawasaki had unknowingly mentored me though his authorship of The Macintosh Way. I hadn’t known this but @unfreakable is also a big fan of Guy Kawasaki. A brief discussion about what Guy has written ensued. @unfreakable didn’t know that a lot of what I deployed in the course of producing and promoting those events—back when we were only 23 and 24—were influenced by my having read The Macintosh Way.
Last Saturday, I saw @guykawasaki pop up in my timeline and I took it as an opportunity to ask Guy if Twitter Stars could be on his Alltop site. Guy was kind enough to agree to add Twitter Stars to the social media category. On Thursday, I saw that Twitter Stars had been added to Alltop and I @’d Guy with a thank you.
I think it would have been strange had someone told me in 1990, that @unfreakable and I would still be friends, still working together promoting, and that I would have contact with Guy Kawaski on something called a “micro-blog”. (Even more strange would have been if someone told me that one day I’d be communicating with Guy Kawasaki from a PC instead of a Macintosh!)
My AIM is flashing. I have @lauralovesart telling me that I need to sign up for Kwippy in one window and @hellobethanne in the other letting me know she just got home from the gallery she works at. Ah, lauralovesart just emailed me a Kwippy invite!
I’ve been using Twitter for a year now. It’s so integrated into my life that I rarely stop and think about it anymore. On any given night, I’m connecting over IM with friends whom I’ve made on Twitter. I’m talking on the phone with friends from Twitter. I’m trading DM’s with friends over Twitter. These days, Twitter seems to be the hub of my social life.
So, when I’m on Twitter, I’m not thinking about where someone works, how much money they’ve made, what kind of car they drive, or the house they live in—They’re all just sorta people. I either connect with them or I don’t. I didn’t think twice about asking Guy Kawasaki if Twitter Stars could be on Alltop. Twitter it seems is a great equalizer. In many ways Twitter levels the playing field among us. We each get the same 140 characters with which to express ourselves.
Barriers that would exist between people in other situations don’t seem to exist on Twitter. We are all stripped down to our bare essentials; our written voice. In this way we each have an equal footing and are free to interact with anyone who chooses to respond to us. We are rejected or accepted based on who we are rather than what we have. This is what I like about Twitter. It’s a big melting pot of personalities, people, and professions.
I sent an email to @crystal a year ago letting her know that I felt Twitter would one day be as ubiquitous as the telephone, email, or IM. Even with The Great Twitter Follower Crash of 2008, I still feel that way.
I’d like to read your stories about the relationships you’ve developed on Twitter and how using Twitter has changed your life.
- Have you met anyone on Twitter who you never thought you’d ever have a conversation with?
- Has Twitter changed your social life? Have you made new business contacts? New friends?
- Have you met people on Twitter who you now talk with on the phone or meet with in real life?
- What have you learned about people by using Twitter?
From Twitter
markdavidson: @guykawasaki Does http://twitterstars.com qualify to be on AllTop.com? Thanks. 
guykawasaki: @markdavidson We’ll add to socialmedia.alltop.com
markdavidson: @guykawasaki Awesome! Thanks! Now I get to add the “Confirmation that I kick ass!” badge! Alltop FTW!
markdavidson: @guykawasaki Thanks for putting http://twitterstars.com on Alltop! 
guykawasaki: @markdavidson glad to help! Pls spread the word.
Tags: Alltop, Followers, Guy Kawasaki, The Macintosh Way, Twitter
At some point, those of us who have drunk the Twitter Kool-Aid try hard to explain it to those who haven’t gotten it yet. Inevitably, the one thing I hear all of us say is “I’m connecting with people who I would have never in a million years met and befriended any other way.”
Twitter has changed my life utterly - in ways I couldn’t have foreseen before I got on it.
It’s one of those places where age, gender, business title, or any other outside characteristic is irrelevant - and who you are and what you say is everything.
That said - if they don’t start figuring out the customer service aspect soon - I’m not sure they will make it in the long run.
When I signed up for Twitter more than a year ago, I had no idea how I would use it, or why anybody would ever follow me! Then I met Zoe Siskos from Social Media Group, and she helped me understand how Twitter could become a tool in my online business — and she took away my fear of becoming “too exposed” in such a public space.
As a self-employed person, Twitter has become my personal “water cooler” bulletin board. It’s still hard to explain to the unbelievers, but it keeps me connected to a variety of people that I might not otherwise be exposed to. And when Twitter goes down, I feel like I am missing something.
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I’ve only been on Twitter a few weeks, but I’m absolutely hooked. I’m a long time user of the internet and have used forums occasionally, but overall I very rarely posted online at all. Since using Twitter I found myself talking to new people, commenting on blogs I see and even setting up a blog myself, which wouldn’t have even entered my head just a fortnight ago! I’ve used Twitter to “network” and asked people to log over my blog for advice and tips as I’ve never come close to doing anything like it online before.
It’s the last thing I check at night at the first thing I check in the morning and I go back as far as I go to read the tweets that have passed while I wasn’t at my computer.
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I’ve drunk the Twitter Kool-Aid, but I’m in love with microblogging and the community that comes with it, not with any particular enabler of microblogging.
That said, I’m loving identi.ca - it’s open source, it’s federated, and there’s a vibrant community on there too. Track even works!
I have a Twitter blog too (http://ohtwitter.com) but am currently focusing my energies on my new Identi.ca blog (http://ohidentica.com). It’d be awesome to see an IdenticaStars.com!
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I sometimes feel like the outsider on twitter but then I thank twitter for alot. If you go to my blog, (http://randomjess.blogspot.com) you will see a post called OH twitter how i love thee. It kind of explains a little bit about how I became a twit and what happened from there.
I’m not on twitter for business or to advertise anything like a lot of the people I talk to on there do. There are some very amazing women (and men) on there that do so much and I envy them for their dedication. I also thank them for making me strive to actually start a blog. Yes it has no rhyme or reason to it but atleast I’m using some sort of creativity and I feel good about it! The people I talk to have inspired me to do that and they didn’t even have to do much.. they inspired me just simply by talking to me.
I have yet to meet other twitter users probably because most of them are pretty far away from me or i don’t talk to anyone close to me. I would love to at sometime try and meet some of these great people, but until then I shall just talk away (and be my silly self)
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