PurpleCar

My small parochial school did its best to educate me. My university put me through a class where I read a bunch of short stories all semester, but unleashed me on the Psychology department after that.

It turns out, that even though I’d like to be a regular novelist, I’m not very well read. I’ve worked on this in my adult life, so I have many, many books under my belt by now. But I have to say, many have been by foreign authors. The reason for this is because I went through curricula from better high schools and read the books on their syllabi. Many of the “classics” are British novels from the previous two centuries. Prejudice kept me from filling in the gaps with varied American writers, poverty kept me from being exposed to anything more than the Bronte ladies, Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I had a little daydream today, like all budding novelists do, of winning a Pulitzer one day. Wouldn’t that be grand? It is the American novelist’s pinnacle, a lottery of bounty and a trophy of respect. I’m probably being totally naive with that image. Still seems cool though.

I don’t allow myself to laze away in the haze of a dream. I realized quickly I truly know nothing about the Pulitzer. Zero. Zip. Nada.  I’m about as far away from winning a Pulitzer as a chihuahua is from being named prima ballerina at the Bolshoi. But I can learn what MAKES a Pulitzer. Not that there is a formula, but I’d like to experience what the Pulitzer committee thinks is worthy of this nation’s top literary prize.  I decided, a few minutes ago, that I should read every single book on that list.

Here is the list (via wikipedia):

[continue reading…]

Recently, Twitter user @soluzioni asked me the following question:

“Hi Christine! Since u seem to use Twitter lots, what are ur insights on the in-effectiveness of visualising threaded discussions? ..-)”

Although I love a good academic chat about Twitter, I didn’t understand this question at all. @soluzioni isn’t a native English speaker, and at times foreign users adopt too many buzzwords or odd habits. My first impression was, “What is ineffective about thinking of improving how we look at threading?” My second thought was, “Either threads are there or they aren’t.”

I ran this question and @soluzioni’s next one (“‘Nothing too clever’: a couple of connections / pivot points to who+what to facilitate context.” [-I think he’s trying to dumb it down for me]) past my rhetoric-busting husband. He suggested that perhaps @soluzioni, whose bio has references to mind mapping, was trying to create a way to represent visually the links between posts in a threaded discussion.

I can understand that. The “ineffective” part threw me off. Anyway, I’m going to work with the premise that @soluzioni is unhappy with the status quo of conversation mapping on the web.

Basically, a forum thread looks like this:

Main question
—>reply
—>reply
—->reply to a reply
—>reply
—->reply to a reply
—–>reply to the reply to a reply.

The first “main question” post is either at the top or the bottom of the page. Then replies are off-set under the main post. Replies to replies are offset even more. Many times, a user will click the “reply” button under the main question but continue on with a point brought up in one of the already existing replies. This means that if you want to follow the discussion, you have to spend the time viewing every single reply entry embedded under the “main question,” no matter what level of offset they are.

This type of chronological map is the simplest way to “follow” a conversation on-line. Unfortunately, the 140 character limit of Twitter makes it impossible to classify your conversation over multiple users and instances. At times people use hashtags (a # symbol followed by a term that reflects the conversation, e.g., #eaglesfootball) but hashtags still take up space and may not reflect all of the relevant topics in a conversation.

Some 3rd party Twitter API apps have attempted to thread Twitter conversations, and they do a decent job of capturing and offsetting immediate replies. But the more people you “have in your room” the more fragments will occur. Without hashtags (which people forget to add anyway), it’s impossible to capture all of the ideas that swarm during a Twitter conversation.

For businesses or people trying to gather ideas via social-media crowd sourcing, this is devastating. Even 1,000 Google alerts honed in on Twitter won’t bring you the little gem of an idea offered by a small-crowd Twitter user. I propose a different method.

I’d like to see a 3rd party app that can build keyword clouds from Twitter entries. I’d like this app to be highly customizable. I want to be able to mark the first “main topic” Twitter entry (a.k.a. “tweet”), then I’d like to modify the user span from which the app will draw keywords, then I’d like to put a time limit on it.

Here’s an example of using this fantasy application:

I put this entry into Twitter:

“Your company wants to start using Twitter as a business tool. How do you advise the use of social media to them?”

I then fire up my fantasy app. I link to my original entry.
I click the option of “all conversation” (as opposed to “only @replies”).
I put a time limit on it by clicking “in the next hour.”
The app first uses a Twitter search to see replies to me (@PurpleCar).

But, and this is where it gets innovative, the app also takes a catalog of all my followers and all THEIR followers, and makes a keyword cloud out of EVERYTHING they ALL tweet in the next hour. If one of your follower’s followers (3 tiers away from you) has more followers than say, 95% of all Twitter users, then that user’s tweets can be pulled into the keyword cloud (this would address “reach” — like a 6 degrees of separation concept — how far do your ideas reach around the Twitter community). The app, after an hour, would give you a reach score and a keyword cloud based on your choices. If your main topic’s keywords show growth (easier if they are very unique words), you can assume that you’ve started a conversation.

This keyword cloud along with some well planned Google blog search and keyword search over the next few days could lend a pretty reliable picture of what people in your community are talking about.

We are a LONG way away from this fantasy app. For the app to be effective, it would have to automatically abbreviate your words (e.g. “business” to “biz” or “bus”), have serious drive abilities (I have over 2,000 people in my room, most of whom are online when I am, and a lot of my followers have more than a few hundred followers themselves), and have total access to the Twitter API. None of those things is possible right now. It’s almost on the verge of artificial intelligence AND NASA-fast CPU’s AND server health and security at Twitter (the last of which is the most impossible option of all).

But, keyword clouds, twitter search and Google alerts exist, so with a bit of work you can fashion your own keyword cloud for a certain group of users over a certain amount of time. You’d have to work on a very small scale, but sometimes big ideas come from just one small voice. You just need to find a way to hear that tiny peep in the darkness.

I hope @soluzioni wasn’t too insulted, and I hope this answers his question about my insights into the threaded (or lack of threaded) conversations on Twitter.

UPDATE: 19 January 2009:

Erich from the comments reminded me via Twitter of tweetstats.com and wordle.net.  I made a nice “wordle” of my Tweets – it’s a keyword cloud of the most used terms by me.  You can see it here. It is for ALL of my Tweets since I started with the app in 2007.

Right now I’m sitting in a cloud of old-book smell. I checked “Critic’s Choice” out of the library today. (No ISBN. Library of Congress Catalogue Card #55-10113)

This book contains the full texts of all the New York Critic’s Circle Prize winners for the years 1935 through 1955. There were no prizes granted for the seasons of 1938-39, 1941-42, 1943-44, and 1945-46. The Great Depression and World War II dominated those years, so I’m sure there is some interesting story behind those absences.

I checked the book out for its possession of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. I am researching character for my own novel and I wanted to also study the dialog in this play (plays, for obvious reasons, are wonderful for examples of effective dialog).

Here are the plays and years that are in the book:

1935-36: Winterset by Maxwell Anderson
1936-37 High Tor by Maxwell Anderson
1937-38 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
1939-40 The Time of Your Life by William Saroyan
1940-41 Watch on the Rhine by Lillian Hellman
1942-43 The Patriots by Sidney Kingsley
1944-45 The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
1946-47 All My Sons by Arthur Miller
1947-48 A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
1948-49 Death of Salesman by Arthur Miller
1949-50 The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
1950-51 Darkness at Noon by Sidney Kingsley
1951-52 I Am a Camera by John van Druten
1952-53 Picnic by William Inge
1953-54 The Teahouse of the August Moon by John Patrick
1954-55 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

The book also contains a lengthy Introduction, titled “Twenty Years in the American Theatre” and an Appendix with the guilty parties, a.k.a. Roster of the New York Drama Critic’s Circle from 1954-55, Presidents of the Circle and the list of Pulitzer Prize plays from 1935-55. I won’t be reading through any of that because I’m not a historian or fan of the upper crust of NYC, and please don’t try to engage me in debate about any controversies that may have surrounded this seemingly incestuous prize awarding. I’m just here to pick up some tips from the dead white men who dominate the list. Next I’ll move on to some modern literature, because I feel quite disconnected from any authors in this book. Unfortunately or fortunately American literature classes are still dominated by these dusty classics, and I only know how/what to study the way I’ve been taught.

If you have any great modern examples (let’s say, after 1980) then I’d appreciate the suggestions greatly. Thanks.

10 signs you are addicted to the internet.

10. You ask the librarians where they keep the Wikipedias.
9. You require your friends to authenticate their identity even at face-to-face meetings.
8. You truly expect the video of your 3rd grade play to be on YouTube.
7. You draw stick figures sideways :-)<—<
6. You narrate your life in Top 10 headlines. This morning it was “Top 10 Ways to Put Your Socks On.”
5. You count clicks on your blog with ridiculously more accuracy than you count calories.
4. You get a letter in the mail and you have to scan it in before you can read it.
3. You think the word “viral” means something good.
2. You attempt to open real-life doors by double-clicking on them.
1. You type “my car keys” in Google’s search bar.