Man, it's been a long time since I last blogged on. Lots of reasons. None really any more important than any other - I was curtailing my activity after we went public last year to just limit my public comments. I have realized however, that between Twitter and Facebook, my life has become a pretty open book anyway so I might as well try to communicate in sentences longer than 140 characters. I do laugh when I think about my parents' generation shying away from any kind of electronic identification device (my mother still doesn't use an ATM machine), yet our generation and the young interatti put everything up online for the entire world to see: "Follow me on Twitter" "Add me as a friend!" "Watch me party like an animal." There is SOME limit to the information one should share with the world, i.e. potential college admissions officers, potential bosses, etc. but every generation has had its share of "Stupid things I did when I was 19" things. Remember Bill Clinton saying he never inhaled?
I have been perusing the social network space and I've been amazed at all of the publicity around the phenomenon of Twitter. It's been all the rage recently, mentioned in every major news and media outlet as if it were the greatest invention since the internet. In reality, Twitter has been around for 3 years and has been used as a means to communicate short SMS-type messages to groups of friends. Some use it to throw out a net to a group in order to meet up somewhere in person. Others use it as an alternate to emailing out interesting news pieces. The difference between Twitter and Facebook or MySpace, though, is you don't have to be part of the inner "Friend" circle in order to follow someone on Twitter. You can just follow them because you want to see what they have to say. I have found it fascinating to follow those out on the bleeding edge to see what THEY are reading, watching and attending. These folks that we consider to be thought leaders. For example, I follow Jason Calacanis (www.twitter.com/jasoncalacanis). Jason founded Weblogs, Inc., which he successfully sold to AOL before anyone knew what a blog was. He also founded TechCrunch50 and, most recently, a user-generated and -turbocharged search engine called Mahalo. I love following his areas of focus because I like this expansive digital world we live in and he is definitely at the forefront. Apparently, though, I'm not alone. To date, Jason has over 64,000 followers. That's a lot of people reading about him playing cards with World Series of Poker Champion Phil Hellmuth in Vegas this weekend, but he's also in tune with what's going on in the Los Angeles digital community, the venture capital world, Arnold in Sacramento and other things that are interesting to me.
We're using Twitter at Platinum to expand our communities - I use it to talk about things that are of interest to me as well as to our employees, friends, investors, etc. I have my Blackberry set to easily update Twitter and because of a special plug-in tool, updates on Twitter automatically update my Facebook status. I have been amazed at the responses I've been getting and I only have a handful of followers. I can't imagine what it would be like to have 64,000 followers. If you haven't done it yet, try it. Follow someone you are interested in. John McCain Twitters. So do Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, Dane Cook, Joe Biden, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lance Armstrong, my brother David, many other friends. Follow who they are following and you will be hooked. Don't be surprised when you are searching the web and see on almost every web page you explore: "Follow me on Twitter" You can find me at www.twitter.com/brianaltounian. TWEET!
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