Social networking

A couple of months back OPSI set up a Twitter account for @legislation, feeding it with the OPSI new legislation feeds. That will reach out to a wider audience than the feeds themselves, but I wonder what that wider audience will make of it. Evidence is as yet scant (samples: “Wow, this is cool – if somewhat indigestible”; “a fascinating feed. Whoever knew so much law was going on!”)

@HMGOV is an unofficial Twitter aggregation of official news feeds from UK Government put together by Justin Kerr-Stevens who blogs at Extended Reach. That’s been going 11 months now, has churned out over 18,000 tweets and attracted a steady flow of responses.

There must be many such aggregations. It’s difficult to judge how useful they are to others. As for me, I’ll track the feeds I want to follow in Google Reader and can’t see that I would find any value in following someone else’s Twitter account for this. But others are not like me and a Twitter feed aggregation will provide value for some.

My own stab at this is @lawtweets which aggregates a few useful law news feeds. Dead simple, but I hope reasonably effective in delivering some useful updates to intersperse the chat and perhaps spark some retweets or comments. Since starting it, I have canned the feeds from those of little value.

An issue I have with this lark is that it is wide open to abuse. It’s an invitation to spam artists. And, even used for legitimate purposes, the more users who feed feeds into Twitter, the sooner the pipes will clog up. Worse is the nightmare vision of the endless loops that would be created if feeds from Twitter accounts were piped into the same Twitter accounts – though maybe Twitter is clever enough to block that sort of tactic. Must test that one soon.

Others have similar fears.

Those like me who are experimenting with Twitter Search should find this post by Steven Feldman of interest. He describes how the hashtag #uksnow evolved from a simple hashtag to one which, with the addition of postcode and snowfall parameters (eg #uksnow SW14 2/10), provided a crowdsourced realtime report of snowfall throughout the UK, which was then mapped by Ben Marsh and others.

For those not yet familiar with the term, a hashtag is a tag prefixed with the # sign used in a Twitter post (or other messaging service), which is intended to aid searching tweets on a particular topic. As the hashtag spreads virally through use by others an increasing stream of on topic tweets is produced when searching for the tag. At its peak #uksnow hit the number 2 position for “trending” search terms on Twitter.

Another hashtag of immediate interest is #ltny, coined for the Legal Tech Show New York. This tag was particularly active during the first afternoon’s session on “What is Twitter and How Do I Use It?”

You could try following #legalitshow but I have slim hopes of this taking off!

In Twitter, the good the bad and the ugly James Mullan poses some of the questions many have in understanding – and extracting – the value of Twitter.

Perhaps I should … lower my expectations of what value I’m actually going to derive from Twitter. It is after all a Social Networking for individuals not for people working within a company so of course there are going to be frivolous and social tweets, so is it a case of just blocking or filtering these out using tools like Twhirl or Tweetdeck or organising my followers so I derive more value from the Tweets they are posting?

I’m a big fan of this whole social networking lark. It’s immensely exciting and full of even more promise than it has already fulfilled. But comment on it does rather get taken over by the services that (unpredictably) gain sufficient traction to hit the headlines and hence gain even more traction. And Twitter is IT now – the flavour of the moment. With (reputedly) 6 million registered users, in excess of 1 billion tweets posted so far and a recent offer from Facebook for the service of $1.5 billion, who can argue with the numbers?

But put the headlines aside and let’s look at it rationally. Twitter is a messaging service which enables you to post a minimalist profile (the primary means by which you can be found, so pay attention to it), broadcast short messages to your followers and tap into the message streams of those you choose to follow. It’s deceptively simple and it has many possible uses for lawyers (Bob Ambrogi suggests sixteen reasons).

Although many commentators refer to it as a microblogging service, that’s just geekspeak – and misleading geekspeak at that. It has almost nothing in common with blogging; sure it’s a platform for networking and conversation, but blogging is essentially about publishing comment and content which is precisely what you’re prevented from doing on Twitter. What you do with Twitter is chat or message in real time; your tweets are here today, gone tomorrow or sooner.

It has all the benefits Bob lists, so add it to your social networking arsenal. But see it for what it is and use it as it suits you.

Excellent response to my call to arms for blawgers to start tweeting. First up were John Bolch, Nearly Legal, Usefully Employed, LawMinx and Charon QC.

So now for my next proposition: pipe us the best feeds in your area of legal interest. Here’s how:

Set up a new Twitter account with a meaningful username like xxxlaw. The land grab for Twitter usernames like these is not yet under way, so you should be able to nab your preferred one. You will need to have a usable alternative email address for the account as an email can only be used for one account. Be sure also to use other appropriate keywords in the “bio” for the account.

Pipe into this account using Twitterfeed the best law news feeds in your subject area. I’d restrict it to just three or four; more may be overkill. But it’s up entirely to you of course.

Now follow it yourself and promote it to others. A stream of useful news will now intersperse the social tweets you follow.

For general law news, follow my lawtweets.

Here’s a proposition: all blawgers not yet on Twitter should tweet … starting now. Don’t hang about.

Why? Let’s not get hung up analysing the possible benefits. If you’re a blawger, you’re already part-persuaded. Twitter is another communication channel / networking tool that’s worth trying. And the more who try, the quicker we’ll realise the potential benefits for the lawyering community.

So, set up an account on Twitter now and follow a handful of others. For some suggestions, try me and those I follow, law.librarian contributors and Legal Voices.

Then tweet a bit: post some thoughts, reply to some who you follow. See what happens.

Plus – important – pipe your blog feed into your account using Twitterfeed. That way every time you post to your blog, the title plus optional excerpt plus link is posted to your account. That’s good for your blog readers who are on Twitter and good for exposing your blog to new readers.

PS. I promise not to twitter on incessantly about Twitter, but with the bit between my teeth, expect a few more in the short term

I’d call Twitter instant messaging with legs – the legs being the attractively light-touch networking functions provided by Twitter and fleshed out as you please by third party Twitter applications.

As to how lawyers can best take advantage of it, you can do no better than read Steve Matthews’ post on Lawyer Marketing With Twitter (“It’s a big dinner table conversation with peers that you get to choose.”)

Kevin O’Keefe and Connie Crosby also weigh in with useful perspectives.

Tweeting status updates (“What are you doing?”) dominates. If you’re not one for chat, Twitter may not immediately appeal. But there’s no compulsion to chat obsessively; you can gain value by following others, just tweeting sufficiently to keep yourself visible; and/or tweet news, developments, links etc. But immediacy and personality are the key it seems; without that you’re off the radar.

For a flavour of legal tweets, see Steve Matthews’ Legal Voices – an aggregation of tweets from Twitter users in the legal industry.