Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [95]
The real Shaq story
At first, Jesse Bearden didn’t believe that his friend Sean was getting regular updates from the real Shaquille O’Neal on Twitter. After all, anyone could be masquerading as the much-loved star of 1996’s smash-hit genie coming-of-age comedy, Kazaam.
So, when @THE_REAL_SHAQ updated his status to tell his followers that he was having a meal at the nearby 5 & Diner, Sean and Jesse decided to stop by and settle the identity question once and for all.
Sure enough, Shaq’s truck was in the parking lot, and the man himself was tucked in a corner booth. While the two friends worked up the courage to say hello, Shaq tweeted again: “I feel twitterers around me, r there any twitterers in 5 n diner wit me, say somethin”
Within moments, they were being invited to share Shaq’s booth, trade notes on Shaq’s Android Googlephone versus Jesse’s Window’s Mobile device, and take pictures. In Shaq’s words:
“To all twitterers, if u c me n public come say hi, we r not the same we r from twitteronia, we connect”
Celebrities and brands who use Twitter to build audiences become approachable on their own terms — even in real life!
You can find more information about the story at http://sesquipedalis.blogspot.com/2009/02/finally-use-for-twitter.html.
So, if you happen to be in a new town on business, or visiting friends or relatives (and need to get away), you might be able to find people in that city to meet for coffee or drinks. Twitter is another avenue by which you can find people; and, having the ability to figure out who they are before agreeing to meet them certainly benefits you. Not only can you look for common interests to talk about before meeting people (which certainly jumpstarts the awkward early phases of any conversation), you can also make such meetings safer by screening people before meeting up with them. Your mom was partially right about not talking to strangers, of course, but by meeting in public and by finding people you actually know in common, you can be a bit safer in making the jump to an offline connection.
In addition to impromptu tweetups, the digital-media folk on Twitter (the Twitterati) have organized and promoted a number of charity events through Twitter; two popular charity events, as of this writing, are @SM4SC (Social Media for Social Change; www.sm4sc.com), shown in Figure 12-3, and @Twestival (www.twestival.com). In just a few short weeks, @Twestival jumped to international consciousness — and headlines the world over — by drawing out 10,000 Twitterers to 200+ events in cities around the world. When all was said and done, a massive series of tweetups on February 12, 2009 raised $250,000 for charity: water (www.charitywater.org) to build safe, clean drinking water wells in developing nations. In April 2009 the main @twestival organizer Amanda Rose (@amanda) traveled to Ethiopia with charity: water founder Scott Harrison (@scottharrison), Twitter investor Chris Sacca (@sacca) and others to film and dedicate the first @twestival well drilled.
Figure 12-3: On the Social Media for Social Change Web site, you can see what events are coming up.
By being active on Twitter — practicing the philosophy of transparency and having genuine interactions — you can increase your circle of friends and connections both on- and offline. You can also merge your offline circle of friends with your online circle of friends in ways you never could before, increasing your social reach exponentially. We talk more about being genuine in Chapter 10.
As it turns out, the more solid connections you have with your Twitter following, the more your network works for you. Although you may find meeting people in airports for board games an advantage to having some Twitter credibility, you can use your online network as quite a resource beyond