*Calming down, wiping keyboard*

They hired Jennifer Preston (@NYT_JenPreston), who started out by asking questions about what people would like to see from the Times on Twitter, balanced with talking about her twins’ prom. Fine, human tweets. She also shared a few social media links that were not so savvy, like 10 Golden Rules of Social Media, which is just a poor concept. The first rule of social media is that there are no rules of social media.

After a month, her account abruptly went cold. I started tweeting around to see what happened, asking Carr and some other Times writers, and just asking the universe at large. Nada.

Today, I got this:

Oh, hai there! Savvy move on her part (or whoever is running the account now), it’s a sign of life without actually writing a tweet.

Why do I care? I have high hopes. An institution like the New York Times needs to be making up their own rules, stretching the limits of what social media conveys and how, and a successful editorial role would be gently pushing people to do more, not less, with the medium. Asking what to do on Twitter is a nice, friendly start, but then it’s time to dive right in. Create a new trend and run with it. If it flops, move on.

Right now what I want is an inside view on what they are doing in there, what conversations are happening. Knock knock, let us in! Because it’s the ongoing development that makes for a conversation, and the meeting of minds that makes for dazzling brainstorms. They’re gestating, fine, but let us see the ideas bouncing around. Are they considering standardizing hashtags for key topics? Let us know. Are they thinking about making a twit pic account for the staff? A Flickr stream that users can submit to? Are they going to start asking readers for ideas on all travel pieces, like the Frugal Travler does when he hits a new town?

Maybe I’ll have idiotic suggestions, maybe most of the suggestions will be throwaways. But not all. Social media is able to connect audience to content producer directly, and as a result we audiences have come to expect direct involvement in the process and the final product. We can’t give great or mediocre feedback without some transparency.

So, maybe our role right now is to ask the Times, What are you doing and how can we help?

I’m stoked that someone had a similar idea to my Twitter MJ trend tracking, and executed it better.

By Justin Day and via Uppity Stuff: emptyage, a social media type dude who is now on my blogroll.

Whenever people are new to Twitter, they talk about how weird it is that people are following them. “I haven’t written anything!” or “I don’t even know who they are!” they cry, weirded out and slightly thrilled.

Anytime you are putting something on the internet, you have to assume people are reading it, and they have their own wacky and varied reasons for doing so. A formal follow on Twitter just lets you know who they are, and that’s a courtesy, not a threat. Sure, there’s someone (or a bandstand of someones) staring in your virtual window, but when they follow you it’s like a tap on the glass to let you know they’re there.

For people who aren’t bloggers, this is an understandably strange idea, but an important lesson. People put things on their Facebook and Flickr pages all the time that make me gasp. That drunken bday photo? Once it’s out there, you can’t assume that you control who sees it, and taking it down doesn’t prevent someone from copying and re-hosting it somewhere else. Using Twitter on your phone makes this even easier: beware the flippant tweet.

Anyone with a blog who tracks their visitors will tell you this: People find you by searching for strange things. At my work, a green living website, one of the consistent searches that leads to us is “naked families.” Why and how people find us that way, I have no idea. Here at my blog, “blackened tofu” and “first tattoo” are big trafficking words, and links from friends’ blogs send a lot of readers.

So you’ve started a blog or Twitter, and here they come, the mystery masses. They find you, and if they like you, they come back again and again, and eventually they let you know who they are. On a blog they leave a comment. On Twitter they send a follow notice or @ reply. You should be doing the same, as a courtesy and to build your own digital web of the people and information you want to catch.

I should note here that I’m disregarding people who drop by once and send a nasty message and trolls, who consistently leave jerky comments just to rile you up. You’ll know the difference by the thoughtfulness. Someone with a legitimate criticism may be worth engaging, otherwise, you’re free to ignore, delete comments, and block anyone.

Notifying someone that you’re there, or being notified, isn’t creepy, it’s conversational. Unless your Twitter account is locked (so you have to approve each follower), people are going to find you through searches or through someone else talking about you and retweeting (RT) your writing. If they don’t like you, they’ll drop you by unfollowing or no longer reading your blog, and that’s that. Vice versa, if you like them and keep reading, eventually it’s good form to send a little “hello, I’m here!” note.

Don’t be put off by the techy terminology, these are each examples of an opportunity to get to know someone. Since they’ve let you know they’re following you, you may as well take a look at what they’re talking about over in their mini online world. Check their Twitter, see if they have a blog, and listen in for a minute. Worst case scenario, maybe they’re this guy.

In that case, give a squee, be thankful you’re not a susceptible teen, and block him from viewing your tweets. Best case scenario? The person has similar interests, goals, or connections that you can benefit from. This happens more than you might expect, but if you’re new, you’ll have to be the proactive one who tracks down people you want to listen to.

On Twitter, I follow many of my favorite writers and NPR personalities, and the firsthand view into their work and lives has helped fuel my own writing career. On blogs, I click on the witty comments and find another blog, and behind that blog a whole new person and their people. My highlights so far include a photographer that makes me smile everyday, a cooking blog that changed my life with a bread recipe, and several artists whose work I bought for my home. Have a favorite newspaper reporter? Look for them on Twitter, find their blog, and voila, you’ve sent out a strand of your web to that person, and they’re that much more real to you.

Google can bring you a lot of search results, but the connections made between people who tweet, blog, and comment can’t be replicated any other way. It’s your own web, create it. Wave hello, and see who waves back.

All images: Flickr CC/Kelly Hau Photography and www.kellyhau.com.

Anyway, in between shopping and asking my lady friends for advice on scented candles, I’m going to Powell’s tonight for a lecture by David Carr (former addict –> NY Times columnist), and then to On Gallery where there is FREE BEER from sponsor Lagunitas and we’re ringing in the new social digital age…where Facebook takes over the TV waves and gives cool people usernames or something. I just hope we can turn off status updates. 10pm-2am, with the Facebook takeover at midnight. Come on by.

#Tgif #RIPTv

If they really wanted me to feel attended to, they would ask for my feedback on each article and continue tailoring my choices for my future magazines. Pandora does this for music, and Netflix does it for suggested movies in your queue. Why can’t publishers do it for our e-magazines?

Here’s their pitch, which is good: “You can customize your playlist, your wardrobe, your car, AND NOW…your magazine.” And here’s how it works: You pick five titles from the following: Travel + Leisure, Golf, InStyle, Money, Real Simple, Sports Illustrated, Time, and Food & Wine. But then you answer “some seemingly random questions” which “seemingly stereotype” the hell out of you in odd ways:

And right there is where they dropped the ball. (That last question makes zero sense. Either one is going to talk your ear off about mankind, but maybe they’re subtly asking if you’re into the DaVinci Code?)

A custom magazine, melding my favorite topics, is a very good idea (it was called Domino, and then it folded). For a major publishing company to offer bits of each of its titles, matched to my personality, is a downright fabulous idea, and one that I would actually pay for. Hear that, falling media giant? I would subscribe!

So, now let’s get into the small print:

1. This is a digital magazine, which you receive 5 copies of, and which is sponsored by the new Lexus 2010 RX, and 2.) “All of the articles contained in MINE previously appeared in Time Inc. or American Express Publishing Corp. publications.”

I currently only subscribe to Real Simple, and I don’t subscribe to those magazines because, well, they’re not all about me. I’m sure there is some tid bit from each that I would be interested in, but I don’t think there’s enough in any of them for me to buy the whole magazine. So what I need Time Inc’s help with is cherry picking articles for me from each of their titles. If they’re going to feed me articles from their archive and not fresh content, the least they can do is make sure I’ll like it. Because I’ve already decided not to read those magazines for a reason.

While I like to think I’m unique, I’ll bet there’s a lot of us with the same education, interests, and income. Articles aimed at 20-somethings who want to spend some money on pretty things must lurk somewhere in each of these titles, there just isn’t enough for me to buy the whole hog. Same goes for other groups: new families, young professionals, the recently divorced, whatever, group us up and make us a Mine Magazine. Grouping us keeps costs down, fine. But that doesn’t get them off the hook for not asking enough questions to begin with. And as a user of Netflix, Pandora, Digg, and other interactive sites, I expect to be able to rate my content and receive suggestions as a result, especially for an online magazine. Everyone else can do it, why can’t our publishers?

My selected titles were Travel + Leisure, InStyle, Money, Food & Wine, and Time. There are guaranteed to be articles in each of these that apply to my type, but I don’t expect to get them based on whether I prefer juggling or celebrity impersonations.

What I’m saying is, make it mine! mine! mine!:

Doesn’t this ad just seem wrong? How do you think most of those dead writers would feel about being stuffed into a Kindle? I imagine some would be all about new forms of communication, but Poe doesn’t strike me as one of them. Jane Austen would be a deft Twitterer (tweeter, whatever), for example (too bad someone who doesn’t use it has nabbed @JaneAusten). I find her obnoxious, but you know she’d give Perez Hilton (@perezhilton) a run for his money.

But Edgar Allan Poe, I don’t think he’d want anything to do with new fangled techmrology. Redo the ad with Jane, Amazon.