Journal: a daily record, as of occurrences, experiences, or observations.

One could easily argue that what a person tweets is a reflection of his or her current state of mind.  Whether it be direct comments, forwarded links or retweets, these micromessages are on extension of what a person is thinking at that particular time.

I do a couple of things to use my daily tweets as s sort of personal journal or record of my “occurences, experiences or observations.”

First, I try to use hash tags in the majority of my tweets, so it is easy to retrieve and review my tweets stream for a particular subject using Twitter advanced search capability:

Second, I use the FeedMyInbox service to authomatically send a compilation of my dailty tweet stream to Evernote, where I can search on terms and easily find what I have been tweeting about on a daily basis.

So far, I have 613 entries in my Evernote journal folder, dating back to Christmas day, 2009.  That is about twices as many entries as I have in my “official” journal.  But history is being recorded – in brief 140 character chunks.

Poor Dilbert. His social skills just don’t measure up to the smartphone!

On a more serious note, is this so far removed from reality? Is the entertainment value of smartphones and related apps getting in the way of real human relationships?

Jeremy Duncan seems to be addicted.  Are you?

I thing my family would rather have a full-scale electrical blackout that an Internet interruption.

Thanks to @JeffCutler for pointing out mentionmap, a service provided by Asterisq, to build a “map of mentions” where “each user is connected to the people and hashtags they mentioned the most in recent tweets.”

Here is my current map.  It will be interesting to check again in a few days to see who I am connected to then.

We are finally getting insight into the real purposes of social media, thanks to Wiley Miller’s Non Sequitur:

I recently stumbled across an interesting site, Klout.com, which analyzes a Twitter account’s history and assigns a “Klout Score,” which is purported to be a “measurement of your overall online influence.

Of course, my inquisitive nature as it is, I had to try it for my Twitter account, @mgd.  The results were not great, but respectable, I suppose:

By contrast, the Klout Score of my favorite Phoenix Suns tweeter, Jared Dudley, was 70.

The three major components of the score are:

• True Reach - the real size of your engaged audience.
• Amplification Probability - the likelihood that your content will be acted upon.
• Network Influence - the influence level of your engaged audience.

Additionally, Klout offered a categorization for my twitter account.

I am certainly not a celebrity, but I do try to be consistent and focused.  I have a small number of followers who seem to be fairly well engaged.

For example, after I had received my Klout store, I joked on Twitter,

“Let’s hope that low @Klout doesn’t mean low worth.”

An “engaged” Twitter follower responded with this encouraging note:

“@mgd I’m sure our worth as human beings is not related to Klout. ”

That was certainly good news.  I am glad that my intrinsic worth really isn’t dependent on my Twitter Klout score.  I was reminded of the profound observation printed on a framed picture my wife gave me many years ago:

“In a hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the type of house I lived in, or the kind of clothes I wore.  But the world may be much different, because I was important in the life of a child.”

The bottom line? Klout is interesting, but has little to do with my value as a human being and the impact I can make on things that really matter.

Such interesting advice from a child …

Brilliant idea, Crazy Eddie!

But maybe so-called social networks can be anti-social as well.  Have you seen any anti-social behavior on Facebook or Twitter?

Several years ago, before Facebook and LinkedIn became household names, a partner and I formed a company named “Network Handshake LLC” and proceeded to develop a bit of social networking software called “ConnectArizona.com,” in an attempt to bring together like-minded individuals in the Arizona business community.  It was a really interesting project, but without adequate capital and marketing support, ConnectArizona.com and Network Handshake really never got off the ground (although I still own the domain names).

Time has shown that the concept of “shaking hands across the network” really has legs.  How many connections do you have on LinkedIn?  How many friends on Facebook?  What other social networks do you use?

However, this week, the power of the “real handshake,” not just the network kind, was reaffirmed.  After not attending an industry conference in well over a year, I am attending the Gartner IAM Summit in San Diego this week.  It has been delightful to engage with customers, partners and friends on a “real handshake” basis – to look individuals in the eye, firmly grasp their hands and speak directly, person to person.  While much can be said for the connecting power of teleconferences, webex sessions, email and social networks,  I believe there is no real substitute to direct, face-to-face, interpersonal communications. 

Viva la “real” handshake!

Note: This little post chronicles my favorite social media exchange in a long time.  You need to see the embedded images to get the gist of an intriguing conversation.

The intrigue began Wednesday afternoon when I was waiting in the Chicago O’Hare airport for a flight to Central Wisconsin Airport, near Wausau, WI.  I tweeted my intentions:

Within a few minutes, I was being followed on Twitter by Wausau Loner:

I had never heard of the Zombie Apocalypse, so I started poking around the web.  I thought, “Do Zombies need Identity Management?”

I found that my tweet was listed on the Wausau Wisconsin Best Blogs and Tweets …

… along with my new follower, the Zombie Apocalypse expert, Wausau Loner.

This morning (Thursday), I received a nice thank you note from Wausau Loner:

I pinged him back and got this reply:

I posed the big question:  Do zombies have unique Identities?  Do they need Identity Management?

Sadly, the answer was negative:

Well, there are still many unanswered questions.  May be next time I visit Wausau, I’ll get together with Wausau Loner and get more details!   I’ll let you know.