My first task was to choose a random word and find 3 interesting and random people to follow. I, then, was to follow 3 people they've each recently replied to.
My Random Three
The first random word I chose was 'Rise'. Don't exactly know why I was thinking that, but it felt uplifting and action oriented for the experiment.
1. @mskogly
He's from Trondheim in Norway and his bio says that he is a web guru at NRK by day, father every morning/ evening, environment freak always, and happy art blogger by night. His current passion is circuit bending and beam bots.
2. @danpeguine
He's from Tel Aviv and his bio says that he is currently developing @honestybox, a Facebook app - 5M+ users. His last is not pronounced like 'Penguin' but like 'Peg - In'
In the spirit of experimenting, I decided to choose a second random word for the 3rd and final follow. I chose 'hurry' as I wanted to it to reflect my feeling of urgency about completing the experiment.
3. @caked
She is from Brooklyn and her bio says that she is a barbie girl in a barbie world and a 20 years old photographer.
The @Reply Nine
@larskflem
I don't understand most of his tweets as they are in Norwegian, but I like his bio which says 'Share and participate. Play and connect.'
@jagels
A web developer, but not much else to describe about coz' he tweets in Norwegian too.
@gautez
I think he works at NRK, but otherwise the tweets are in Norwegian.
@titanas
He is from Athens, Greece and is interested in some sort of Mobile/ Technology/ Web mélange.
@OHT
He is from Tel Aviv and involved with OneHourTranslation.com, an all languages translation site that uses real people to translate the text.
@rachelsamoul
She writes and blogs in French about a variety of different topics mostly around her life in Tel Aviv.
@couture
Her bio reads "I am everything she said I was...& you fucking love it." Voila!
@ibeaute
Young girl from California with protected updates who says in her bio "there's 1000 u'z and ONLY 1 ME!!!"
@mannywallace
Don't know much about him, but he seems like a nice man who just lost a close friend to AIDS.
Three Observations/ Findings/ Learnings:
1. This experiment sounded simple and straightforward at first, but like all experiments there are factors outside the initial problem set that affect it along the way. In my case, the context of my search word was different for different people, the time of day that I was searching impacted who I found and English is not as commonly spoken as we think it is.
2. Twitter is an interest + 'people you know/ friends' network. Few have a balance, for many it is skewed one way or another.
3. More people are passionate about their work/ job/ career today than they were a decade or two ago and they love talking about it. Gone are the days when people worked simply to pay their bills. The world will be a much better place, if everyone loves what they do and where they work.
My overall experience was mixed, it was exciting to find random interestingness, but it was also frustrating when I didn't understand it due to language barriers. One way to overcome this frustration could be to incorporate a dynamic translator into Twitter apps that allow users to translate tweets into the language of their choice. I hope @TweetDeck reads this and finds a way to connect more of us. :)
Thanks to Scotty Hendo for giving me the chance to participate in my first Twitter experiment. The experiences of two other participants in this experiment are here, Cindy Hartman and Geoff Wood.
To more Twitter experiments!
PS: I intend to continue following my Random 12 until the end of the month and then make a final decision on who I filter out. I feel generous giving people a chance. ;)
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