Thought & Theory

Off to Chicago to check out the concert on Thursday. If you’re in the Chicago area, be sure to buy your tickets for a great benefit concert.

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So good I actually made a blog post about it instead of posting to twitter. Made by Pete Candeland and Passion Pictures.

Since Oprah is on Twitter, everyone you know is going to be on Twitter. This is inherently good and bad. Good because you finally don’t have to explain to your friends what Twitter is anymore, bad because eventually Twitter will seem like an overcrowded party that used to be “exclusive” and “cool”.

There are two main points to this post, let’s start with #1:

Staying Social. Twitter is full of different types of users who think Twitter is used for many different things (which it is). The whole point of Twitter, it’s core function, is being social. Talking with other people through @replies and DMs (direct messages) is the foundation of Twitter. Simply posting random updates about your life and a picture here and there will not get you to Ashton Kutcher status. I know that isn’t everyone’s goal and that’s fine, but to be fair to the people following you and true to the “social” part of social media, talk to people. Spend the extra time during the day to get involved in conversations, ESPECIALLY ones that are directed at you! I’ve found countless real-world interesting people on Twitter that are posting, but aren’t talking to anyone. What’s the point? Please let me know if I missed the boat on this one.

Point #2, Good Twitter Tools. Here are a couple Twitter tools that I have used, use on a daily basis or have heard are kind of cool:

• Tweetie is by far the best iPhone app I have used, and I would know, I have 4 of them on my phone right now. It’s worth the $5 and the UI feels very native to the iPhone. I’ve yet to experience one error message, one missed @mention, etc. Also, you can manage multiple Twitter accounts, which is very helpful on the go!
• Tweetie again, but this time for their desktop application. I tried Tweetdeck, I really did. It lagged like crazy, it distracted me and the UI just seemed quirky to me. Tweetie is well organized, simple and gets the job done. You can shorten URLs without confusion, threaded DMs like iChat, write multiple tweets and leave open to post at a later time (good for quick notes), repost (RT) other people’s tweets and the only item I am waiting for is multiple account management. I was happy to spend $20 to support a solid app, but could have had it for free with advertisements.
• Tweet Dumpr is a very simple service that I just found today. I remembered interacting with a few nice people early on when I joined Twitter a couple thousand tweets ago and couldn’t remember their names. Tweet Dumpr creates a line by line text file (.txt) of your past 3200 tweets that gets emailed to you almost instantly. If you remember part of someone’s username, search for it in the text file and BOOM! Lots of great uses can come from combing through your last 3200 tweets.
• Tweepular is an online app that you plug your Twitter account info into and you get a broad sweep of your followers and people you are following. You can do some account cleanup, using their bulk un-follow services and you can also find the Tweepular influencers who you aren’t yet following. Here’s a blog post high-five to Jason Tryfon, Tweepular’s creator.
• Tweetgrid is my favorite Twitter search application out there. There are a couple others, including Twitter’s official search engine, but Tweetgrid has worked well for me and is very lightweight and simple. Plug in keywords, search your name or anything fun and follow along in real time as results come in (without having to click to refresh results). Also, you can view up to 100 results at a time AND you can monitor 9 searches at one time (yes 9 searches).

I know there are a ton of other Twitter Tools out there, if you have anything to recommend, feel free to do so in the comments. We are always looking for new tools to try out and of course share.

And of course, follow us on Twitter: @thoughtntheory, @helloportfolio (on Twitter vacation right now) and @iwearyourshirt

After about 3 - 4 weeks of hard work, we’ve released a fully-redesigned version of TheCommon.org. We’re really pleased with the results and even more pleased with the response from users.

Big thanks goes out to all people involved. And like always, look out for updates in the near future.

Visit TheCommon.org

Update: The video was made by Andy Anderson at Paradox Media Group.

If you’ve ever watched MTV or any of its properties over the past few years then you’ll recognize the work of Dan and Andre from Dress Code NY. They’ve just released a new book called “Never Sleep” focusing on a designer’s transition from art school student to working professional. We sit down and chat with them about the book, Dan’s virginity and various aspects of life as a designer.

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