Global Twitter-Based Charity Event Returns with Local Twist

PHOENIX (Sept. 7, 2009) – Twestival, an event that gathers social media users to benefit a local nonprofit, will return to the Valley Friday, Sept. 11 from 6 to 9 p.m. at aLoft Tempe located at 951 E. Playa Del Norte Drive in Tempe. The event, which is expected to draw a crowd of more than 200 will benefit the Phoenix-based St. Mary’s Food Bank.

Twestival Phoenix is one of several meet-ups that will occur in various cities around the world between Sept. 10 and13th, each designed to benefit a local charity. For the Phoenix event, local Twitter users chose St. Mary’s Food Bank as the benefiting charity. During the event, Phoenix “tweeps” will get to participate in a silent auction, meet other local Twitter users, enjoy food and one complimentary drink, and of course post Tweets.

“It’s amazing how quickly everyone worked to pull Twestival Phoenix Local together,” said Chris Lee. “We have an incredible silent auction, a great location at aLoft Tempe and have already received overwhelming response from the community. We hope to see lots of Phoenix tweeps come out to have an amazing time and generate lots of cash and awareness for St. Mary’s Food Bank.”

The first 24-hour “‘Tweet-up with a social conscience” inspired thousands and raised $250,000 for charity:water, which enabled the drilling of 55 wells serving more than 17,000 people in Uganda, Ethiopia and India. Following the success of the first Global Twestival last February, in which more than 200 cities participated, Phoenix Twitter users were determined to participate, especially this time with the focus on a local charity.

About Twestival
A Twestival, or Twitter-Festival, is a global series of events organized by volunteers around the world in rapid-fire time frames. Twestival was started in London in September 2008 by a group of Twitter users who wanted to bring people together offline and support a great cause. A few months later, in February 2009, Twestival Global launched in more than 200 cities around the world, including Phoenix, to benefit charity: water. Twestival is operated entirely by volunteers and independently from the nonprofits of which it supports, though the organizing teams do work closely with the nonprofits to outline an achievable and measurable fundraising target. For more information visit, www.phoenix.twestival.com

Links and contacts:
• http://twestival.com/media/
• @twestival

Local:
• http://phoenix.twestival.com
• @twestivalphx
• Email: twestivalphx@gmail.com
• @chrislee, clee@customersystemsinc.com

Now that a good portion of the global society has signed onto Twitter and it’s talked about daily in print, broadcast and online media, I think it’s safe to say it has gone mainstream.  (Not new news)

The recent Twitter trouble following the Web attack that left many without an outlet to share, brought to a head, a question I had been pondering for some time – why does the vast majority use Twitter? Do they do it because they genuinely love to live out loud? Do they tweet to stay in touch with friends, colleagues or customers? Or do they do it because they don’t want to be left of out of the crowd – fearful they will miss out on something if they aren’t tweeting?

Is Twitter more about the crowd affect rather than a genuine desire to share?

Mixed posts from users the day twitter slowed to a crawl proved there are people on both sides of the fence. While most posts were of deep concern – wondering when Twitter would return – some were of temporary relief. Here’s a sampling from the day twitter was down:

“twitter, you’re letting me down. how do i know what my friends are doing when they’re on the go?! I feel lost.”

“tweeting from the apple store cuz twitters down on my phone…YAYY
TWITTER YOU’RE BACK!!<333”

“So has twitter been down all day or is that just me? It was kinda makin me mad and then I realized, twitter is NOT that big of a deal(:”

“When Twitter is down it’s pretty apparent how nonessential it is. It’s basically just a noise machine. Today was quiet and it was nice.”

An article in the Wall Street Journal posted the following day, also found differing views on the issue in which one source said, “The truth of the matter is, I got back 10 minutes of my morning — not to have to think of something interesting to twitter which is so damn hard at 5 a.m.”

Meanwhile, MC Hammer who was quoted in the article had a completely different take on Twitter: “My immediate thought was, ‘There is no replacing this platform…I couldn’t satisfy the need to communicate. For me, it would be the equivalent of going outside to get on the freeways and find that the freeways are closed down.”

If some users think of Twitter as a chore or something they should do rather than want to do, why do they continue to use it?

Patrick Harter (@tryharter), owner of Provision Team, a management and consulting firm, said, “They feel compelled maybe, or for some, they look at it as a potential money-maker, not a useful tool. For me it is all about the community, and keeping people in touch with who I really am. Many others do not see it as this.”

Brent Spore (@iboughtamac) of Synergy said many in the majority, or mainstream, may be using social media for the wrong reason. Somewhere along the way someone either told them they should be on it or the lure of the crowd drew them in. Regardless of their motive, many often feel they should create different personas for various social media outlets, and, as a result feel fractured.

“The core thread of social media is to have life,” he said. “Just live life. Be the same regardless of where you are. Just be you. Don’t get on Twitter just because someone told you to get on it. If you don’t like that level of interaction, if you don’t understand the value of just being yourself and how you are more interesting than you think you are, and you think you have to invent these personalities, you’re not ready for social media.”

Could the reactions to the outage also be an indicator of where Twitter is in its life cycle? Following the bell curve model, Twitter has been embraced by the innovators and early adopters, and certainly has crossed the chasm to the early majority. Now, some in the majority find it a relief when Twitter is temporarily dismantled. So how much longer will they stick around? Will people begin to turn away from Twitter? Could it be on its dissent to the late majority then the laggards? Or will the majority fall to the wayside, while the early adopters and innovators become the primary users once again?

Brent said it is like a fad to many people. They feel like they have to jump on the bandwagon, attach it to their persona, and once they get tired of maintaining it, they will leave and find the next trend to attach to their persona. He said many people are there for the wrong reason – whether feeling like they should be or trying to figure out how to monetize it – and they fail to see the true value.

“The people that don’t get the true value will fall to the wayside,” he siad. “They will jump on the next train that comes along. They’ll latch it onto their persona and they’ll try to maintain it until they get tired. Then they’ll fall off again. They think that’s what they need to do.”

This is slightly different from my usual posts…it’s actually a story I wrote a while ago about the fragmenting effect social media can have (warning: it’s a bit long). What do you think? Does social media fragment its users? If so, how long do you think this trend will last? 

On Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Viddler and countless other social networking sites he’s known as “iboughtamac.” Offline he’s known as Brent Spore and his life is an open book to those that know him – and even those that don’t. He prides himself on living honest and out loud and believes the world would be a much happier place if everyone lived this way.

Brent is 34, a husband, a father of a 9-month-old, owner of a design and brand management firm, a youth group leader at his church, and a social media zealot, or as he calls it a “geek.” Like many, he is a time-starved multitasker who won’t give up Tweeting, blogging and posting photos and videos.

He loves sharing his life with people. In fact, when his wife Michelle was in labor with their daughter he blogged on Twitter, uploaded photos on Flickr and posted videos on Viddler, giving his followers a play-by-play of the delivery – nothing too graphic of course.

“She was an ‘iBaby’ as people referred to her,” Brent says, motioning towards their daughter Cadence – Cadie for short – who is dressed in a white onesie with a pink Apple logo on it, which he and Michelle created.

“For me it wasn’t about let’s do this Internet thing and be famous,” Michelle says. “We have family in California and his parents are in Seattle. We have friends all over the country, so it was more about including them in on the experience.”

“It was just letting people be a part of the joy we were experiencing,” Brent says. “I wouldn’t say I’m addicted. I am a big fan and I do think they really are a natural way for people to connect and that’s one of the reasons why people flock to them.”

For the majority of social media fans like Brent, it’s about sharing an experience, communicating, and being in control of the news they disseminate and consume. But the sheer number of social media sites has created even more opportunities for addiction.

Despite his burning desire to be everywhere all of the time, constantly creating, sharing and living out loud, which the social networks give him the platform to do, Brent often feels “fragmented.”

“We go to MySpace and check our messages. We go to Facebook and check our messages. We go to any number of social networks that we’re a part of, and there are thousands of them, where people hang out, play games and message each other,” Brent says. “Instead of it being about us, it’s about us having to go somewhere to check our messages. We’re all getting fragmented again.

As the demand for user-generated content grows and more sites continue to be created, will the time-starved social media devotees like Brent become even more fragmented? Or is there change on the horizon for the world of social networking? 

Fractured Communications
Dr. Alisa Cooper, an English professor at South Mountain Community College, uses social networks because she likes the ability to connect with other educators around the globe, but she says time management can be an issue so she forced herself to make a choice.

“I picked the one that I found the most connection with people and I don’t visit any of the others,” Cooper says. “If you don’t control your usage it can be time consuming and it can result in a lot of wasted time. So I wouldn’t call that fragmented because I made a choice.”

Cooper doesn’t believe any one social network will take over, rather more programs like FriendFeed, which allows users to make one post that is then submitted to multiple networking sites, will begin to connect the fragmented networks.

Some believe the decline in the number of MySpace users, though it is still widely popular, may be a sign of things to come. Meanwhile, however, Facebook, with more than 200 million active users; LinkedIn, with 40 million members; and Twitter, with an estimated 55 million monthly visits – the company won’t disclose the number of active accounts – continue to gain momentum and are among the most trafficked social media sites in the world. And consumers still haven’t completely turned their backs on sites like LinkedIn, Brightkite, Flickr, YouTube, and the countless blogs and RSS feeds.

Will social media users find solidarity in one information aggregator or will the online world become more saturated? 

Screaming for a revolution
Brent explains that before the Internet, the nightly ritual of the “geek” was to dial into a bulletin board system, or BBS, to play games, check their messages, read news and whatever else that particular BBS offered. Then hang up and dial into the next system and do the same thing. Since there was no email, or centralized place for messages, users would have to check their messages on every system.

These were extremely popular, but there was one problem; the system fragmented its users. Fast forward to 2009 and many of the social networks are creating the same dilemma. 

“The revolution that is coming, that I believe the internet is screaming for is individuality,” Brent says. “I think, social networks like what we have today, Facebook and MySpace, are going to reach the end of their life spans, because people want to be their own social networks.”

For social media users and generators, this means instead of having to visit a Facebook or MySpace to check  messages or disseminate information, they would become the hub – their own social network of sorts. They would post and receive messages, hangout and interact with their friends all in one location.

Piecing the fragments together
Until the revolution comes, Brent works to create communities, to bring people together to get things done. He still has faith in the ability of social networks to build communities. He loves being connected and the idea of synergy, so much so he even named his design firm Synergy.

“Community is powerful,” he says. “I think many minds make things better. It’s the spirit of social networking and what’s happening on the net today.”

In 2007, in an effort to unite the fractured social media community in the Valley, Brent and his wife Michelle took on the responsibility of bringing PodCamp, a social media “unconference,” to Arizona. The response was overwhelming. Hundreds of social media users and creators showed up to connect, learn and share. 

“It seemed to me that there were a lot of people involved in social media, but there’s nothing in Arizona that pulls them together,” he says. “There’s synergy, which I’m all about. That’s what really attracted me to PodCamp – it is the attitude of synergy embodied. It has that spirit and I just love stuff like that. I love being part of a team.”

I am a major proponent of Twitter. It’s an amazing tool for staying on top of news, finding out where friends are and what interesting organizations are doing. It’s an amazing communications tool that allows tens, hundreds or thousands (depending on the number of followers) the ability to engage immediately.

That said, you have to be very careful about what you put out there. Check out this blog post about how someone recently “Tweeted” themselves out of a new job.  You never know what types of Twitter searches have been set up and who your posts will reach.