Dave Caolo

Last month I described my suspicions that spending so much time online is making me dumber. This week, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco has confirmed it.

“[study subject] Mr. Campbell can be unaware of his own habits. In a two-and-a-half hour stretch one recent morning, he switched rapidly between e-mail and several other programs, according to data from RescueTime, which monitored his computer use with his permission. But when asked later what he was doing in that period, Mr. Campbell said he had been on a long Skype call, and “may have pulled up an e-mail or two.

Mr. Campbell and his colleagues, each working from a home office, are frantically trying to set up a program that will let them share images with executives at their prospective partner.

But at the moment when Mr. Campbell most needs to focus on that urgent task, something else competes for his attention: “Man Found Dead Inside His Business.”

That is the tweet that appears on the left-most of Mr. Campbell’s array of monitors, which he has expanded to three screens, at times adding a laptop and an iPad.”

Here’s the brief, honest answer:

If you’re comfortable using Twitter and you enjoy it, yes.

If you dislike using Twitter, don’t force it because it seems like it’s what you should do. Your output will be poor and you’ll get stressed about having to do something you dislike. Instead, focus only on the platforms you enjoy and would be using anyway.

David Caolo is a freelance editor, writer and blogger who believes that the simplest answer is best.

When I was at Berklee, we had a joke.

Q: How many Berklee students does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: 10. One to change it, 9 to say, “You’re doing it wrong.”

Joshua Blankenship is right when he says, “…will everyone just STOP thinking they have the market cornered on how I’m supposed to use the web? You don’t.”

Whether your goal is to make per-click dollars or produce ad-free, killer content, you’re right. Define what you want to do, how you’re going to do it and then do the best job possible. That’s the only real rule.

A great article from Time Magazine, explaining why Facebook’s greatest demographic is middle-aged people with kids … people like me. Two highlights from the article:

Facebook is for old people because

7. We have children. There is very little that old people enjoy more than forcing others to pay attention to pictures of their children. Facebook is the most efficient engine ever devised for this.

5. We’re lazy. We have jobs and children and houses and substance-abuse problems to deal with. At our age, we don’t want to do anything. What we want is to hear about other people doing things and then judge them for it. Which is what news feeds are for.

Read the rest. It’s great.

Twitter has held the attention of the web like I haven’t seen anything do in a long time. While the premise is simple — briefly answer the question, “What are you doing?” — the benefits are numerous. Some users share the minutia of their day. Others promote projects they’re working on, while others connect with far-flung friends, seek help to puzzling questions or simply “eavesdrop” on the informal thoughts of people they admire.

You may use Twitter for any or none of these purposes. Today, I’ll talk about using Twitter as a search engine, and its advantages over Google.

Easy, Dave. You’re insane. Google is a search engine. Twitter is, well … Twitter. It’s ridiculous to make such a comparison.

While Google is the 300lb gorilla in the world of internet search, it isn’t the definitive answer to finding things on the web. Here’s an example.

Recently, I was working on a WordPress project and got stuck. So, I opened a new browser window, navigated to Google, entered the best keywords I could think of and executed the search.

Instantly, I was presented with tens of thousands of results. The first four or five were helpful, but didn’t offer the answer I was looking for. Those results suggested others, and soon fifteen minutes passed and I wasn’t much closer to finishing my project. In fact, no progress had been made that whole time.

So, I posed the question to my Twitter followers; “How do I [do this] in WordPress?” Then it happened — I was offered exactly the answer I was looking for in less than sixty seconds. In that instance, Twitter beat Google hands down. Here’s what I’ve discovered to be the advantages of Twitter over Google.

1. It doesn’t interrupt my workflow

When I execute a search on Google — and scan the results — I do so at the cost of productivity on my project. I must stop what I’m doing, open a new window and start digging. Often I find what I want in a minute or two. Sometimes I don’t. Either way, I’ve halted progress on my project. Even time spent on brief searches adds up.

When I “execute a search” via Twitter, there’s almost no interruption in my workflow. The time it takes me to bring Twitterrific to the foreground, type my question (more on that later) and hit the return key is about ten seconds. After that, I can return to my project and continue working.

2. High quality results

Meanwhile, the “Twitter Elves” (my followers) read my query and those who have the answer reply. The “weeding through” that is such a time-consuming part of using Google takes care of itself. Not EVERYONE replies, including those who don’t have answer. Only those who are absolutely confident in their answer click the reply button. I get the right answer (or darn close to it) only. Consider the myriad of irrelevant results of a Google search.

3. I can pose a question in real English

The old joke about using the Yellow Pages was, “First I’ve got to guess what they’ve decided to call this.” Will I find the number for a house painter under “Painter,” “Contractors,” “General Contractors” or what?

Setting up a Google search is the same sort of guessing game. The first step is to imagine which magical words will produce the intended results. Often it takes several attempts.

Twitter eliminates this bit of sorcery. Instead of typing, “WordPress, pages, hidden, menu bar, side bar” and crossing my fingers, I simply ask, “Does anyone know an easy way to hide certain pages from a WordPress sidebar?” That’s plain old English and it elicited exactly the result I was after.

4. Results based on knowledge, not SEO skills

One’s ability to optimize a web page for search engines has nothing to do with his or her ability to put useful content on that page. Anyone can tag, keyword and otherwise tweak a page so that a search engine will notice it readily. The content on that page may be crap, but Google sees it!

Twitter-generated results come from the knowledge and experience of the 1,000+  people who follow me. I can tap into their minds in real time, which is a benefit over the static pages that Google serves.

The folks at Mahalo get it, kind of. Human beings generate their search results, but even then I’m viewing what the author of that results page decided to include. I can’t speak to him/her directly and get an answer as quickly as he can type.

Just try it. You’ll be surprised with what happens.

While using Twitter this afternoon, I had an idea.

There are lots of people using Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc. The so-called “social” apps on the web. I’ve got 862 Twitter followers as of this writing.

When Britney Spears created a Twitter account (or, more likely, her marketing team), I thought, “I wonder what other celebrities are using Twitter? Could I be connected to any of them, Kevin Bacon-style?”

Surely, among the 800+ people who follow me, the thousands of people who follow them and so on, is a set of links between me and a celebrity. I decided to find out.

For the purposes of my experiment, I chose Alyssa Milano. She’s high-profile enough that many people know her, and I’ve got no pre-existing connection to her. So, here’s the question:

How many degrees of separation exist between me and Alyssa Milano, using only social media connections as the links?

Ged suggested that there might be a connection in the Cape Cod Baseball League somehow. He’s almost right. I did see Jason Varitek play with the Hyannis Mets, and he went on to play on the Red Sox with Manny Ramirez, and Alyssa blogged about meeting Manny, but that doesn’t really count.

This is where you can help. If you can provide a link(s) between me and Alyssia, let me know via Twitter.

This will be fun!

Update: Not five minutes later, I’ve got two connections

• Number one
• Number two