I got in the previous weeks the feedback by known or unknown Twitterers who are “Follow Friday”-ing me by displaying,  recommending to the others my Twitter ID for various reasons, mostly because they think people they recommend are cool or worthwhile following. Since this communication practice repeated last Friday,  I’ve asked Twitterers what is follow Friday and who actually came up with this idea and why?
In the last few days I’ve read two good blog posts: danah boyd’s view on the communication phenomena of retweeting and Jonathan Zittrain’s thoughts on technical 140 characters barriers on Twitter. Having in mind  that retweeting process is one of the conversation practices on Twitter,  the same can be denoted to the Follow Friday movement as one of the communication behavioristic conventions.

How Follow Friday works? Basically,  Follow Friday helps people recommend other Twitter folks. As a way of recommending people you follow to other users on Twitter, Follow Friday  is presented with hashtag #followfriday or #ff. The purpose is that those who are being recommended would (potentially) gain new followers. After suggesting the name of the twitterer,  the practice is to write why you are recommending them as suggested people to follow. Some twitterers follow this practice, but many people don’t as they just write Twitter user names without stating the reason(s) why one should follow those people. Otherwise, the conversation moves into typical micro memes. Here is an example of the correct usage of FF:
@danbri  because he is the semantic web expert and co-founder of FOAF #followfriday.

The twitterer who came up with the idea of  ‘”Follow Friday” movement said that #ff has lost a lot of its original charm because too many people are making wild recommendations without any justification, in order to collect and get more random followers. I was also asking why Friday? No one so far explained this, either because is TGIF expression that many users say on Twitter every Friday, as it is more relaxed day for casual gaining new followers or because the idea that the creator of this movement likes the music of The Cure (read: Friday, I’m in love! aka I am sharing love for these followers).
This week I had a chance to talk with, above mentioned Twitterer,  Dan Brinkey on work matters, and later I was contemplating the idea of Follow Friday concept as micro communication FOAF (Friend of a friend) convention, and came to conclusion that beside recommendation and connecting people aspect, Follow Friday has communication facet of “describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do” . Twitter user ID’s are describing people, person who recommends the friend is the link, and description line “why I recommend this person to be followed” presents things they create or do. This way FF allows people and groups of people to describe social network relations without the need for a centralization.

Beside suggesting other people to follow and explaining why those people are useful to follow, there is another phenomena that I’ve noticed last Friday: massive retweeting of Follow Fridays of other people tweets. I was in wonder why would people retweet them and came to the thoughts of meta –meme Twitter user’s tagging  and collecting potential followers. This would be an example when sharing (info, contacts) is not caring but rather micro trading (silent request for an expected requirement of following back). What follows next  is an interesting to investigate as  communicative (non) behaviour amongst Twitterers that is in permanent flux.

Recently I was asked by a colleague who is working on the launching of the new information management, knowledge management (KM) system about evaluating social networking tools (read: social software, web 2.0 tools) as potential implementation in the “old” web 1.0 models for web repositories (during past times we had locked archives, not open systems). Which made me think and evaluate that special project we are about to launch (note: since I’m not bringing out insider’s information on my personal blog, but on local work intranet blog, information stated here are my personal reflections on certain issue in general).

Having in mind that the open access databases, archives, repositories are hopefully present in technology, education, science, and that the iron metal systems are behind us (hopefully), let’s say that the technology, science, academia are striving to be open. A friend of mine in our talk this evening mentioned to me good news that his teacher, professor at University is referring kids to use Wikipedia. He also says that he can find, as being soon graduate Computer Science student, very useful tips and data on programming or scrips, coding right in Wikipedia.

The full text documents systems or reference ones beside the interactivity and collaboration (in the case of Wikipedia), and others academic document repository systems at institutional level for capturing and disseminating information- need what we call social software and the usage of social networking tools for sharing. Moving from static locked systems, new ones are a dynamic web-based applications that use an advanced open source software technology for facilitating interoperability and promoting coherence in knowledge management and information exchange (hello web 2.0, and web 3.0!). Such dynamic systems require sharing tools for exchanging data, browsing data, and merging records, collaboration (from Aim, bebo, Linkedin, Digg, Facebook to Twitter, Friendfeed, Netvibes, etc.). For example: something in the form of the widget like you see the one below this post (Share this! or Add this!) for the sake of social bookmarking and exchange data amongst IT professionals, academics, social networkers, researchers, everyday Web users.

And today another colleague asked me to talk about Twitter’s purpose and usability in such systems. I will just mention one thing here as it requires deeper analysis: Twitter is useful not only for dissemination of information or sharing any information, but also as interactive collaborative playground where everybody is there (Here comes everybody!) and especially after 3 years of being present not only as as micro-blogging tool but as well as a space for networked publics that looks like (and is) micro-global village with individuals role in it. So why Twitter? Simply, because everyone is there. Your allies. Some people more or less on Facebook or My Space or Linkedin, but Twitters’ infrastructure’s been spread in all human activities. Including science. Technology. Academic world. Celeb-circustry. You name it.

I’m looking forward to see how open access systems will and are responding to current changes in Social web fluctuations, but as far as we know it using social bookmarking, sharing, social software tools in general didn’t hurt any sci-tech system. It can make it only to be more open and dynamic.

Literally. A week or something ago I took mini vacation on the south of Italy where I’ve spent recuperating time enjoying spring/summer sun, Mediterranean sea, beautiful air and sunsets, and couldn’t help but to create a tweet in the sand. The place where analogue and digital meets:

More on my Flickr. Still contemplating idea for photo-log book for my 365 days project. Any ideas?

I want to share some of my personal reflections on the earthquakes happening in Italy in the past seven days. Now, it’s been a week since a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck in Abruzzo, at 3.32AM (01.32 GMT, EDT Sunday) killing over 270 people and causing severe damages to several cities. Especially the city of L’Aquila because there was the epicenter (96km northeast of Rome) of the “terremoto” (Italian for the earthquake).

Since I was immediately awaken, first thing was grabbing the mobile and twittering about this (which is not so smart to do if you’re in the middle of strong shakes, but…), and then I’ve realized that only few of us (read 6, and later 7 people) in the Italy were twittering about this live. It was interesting that the social media in this case was faster than national TV and radio stations. Usually, international media houses, e.g. CNN , are 15-20 min behind the social web and networks, while Italian national stations needed more time, let’s say an hour, hour and a half.

You have to understand this from two reasons (not necessarily in this order): 1. life philosophy in Italy (so far as I got it)  is “piano, piano…”, which means “as slow as possible…” – implemented in every aspect of (Italian) life, and 2. political reasons and the premier’s ownership of all National TV channels (and other relevant media). Sounds familiar? Well…You probably heard the controversial story of a scientist in L’Aquila,  seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani claiming that thanks to his research he had foreseen the disaster four days before it have happened but he had been ignored by Civil Protection. Nothing that we’ve never seen before regarding the government and the media and freedom.

Anyways, I was sending tweets from Rome as I was checking if any media online reported about the earthquake, but the fact was that the very few of us awakened by the quake used Twitter to spread the news before any news agencies. In the next few hours Twitter was the only source available to Italian people to share news and information as well as the contact medium for their friends and family in L’Aquila. The next morning and day(s), Twitter, beside other social networks (especially Facebook) was the major information tool to keep updated with the events in the region and spreading the news world wide, because there were aftershocks and minor tremors (still present). After the major quake, Facebook and Friendfeed were the most active social networks with a role of the spreading the current situation, announcing appeals for help, ways on how to make donations, keeping in touch.

Current situation in the Italian twittersphere cannot be compared with the massivness and the noise that happened in Moldova recently, because as micro-blogging tool it presents among Internet users something new. IMHO, it is the matter of time when this social media tool, that’s being mostly used by the academics and IT/social media professionals, will be spread amongst Italian population, the active Internet users of the other social networks.

Five days ago I experienced really nice act of kindness by Twitterer on my followers/following list. Five minutes or so before leaving my working station I twittered about free hugs, to test the power of Facebook and Twitter in foreign city and country as well as the radius of my digital visibility here in Italy.

A minute later I got direct message from a Twitterer residing in Rome, Apple fan and one of rare Romans who is using Twitter in tech,  saying he’s coming in 15 min to meet me in front of my building. Very spontaneously this nice person arrived immediately via moped in front of my working place to give me a hug, and Moleskine notebook -City Rome. Those who are following me on Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and where not – can notice that I dig Moleskine notebooks.  Thanks to Twitter, I’ve instantly met a person with whom I was sending replies and exchanged thoughts on technology and life in Rome the same day. Moleskine notebook was really nice gesture and welcoming gift, and I am very grateful to all people who are interacting with me, and picking up things I say or write.

The power of social web implies also analogue communication performances influenced by the online presence and ID management of the persona. This act of kindness du jour and the whole week I am memorizing fondly as one of the  advantages of the usage of web 2.0 services. I’m very thankful that I can gradually, here and there, meet my invisible audience.

Please have in mind that I won’t be able to respond to my contact email in the next 15 days due to my work and personal engagements. But then, you can use Twitter for my updates. Let me know if you are in Rome  for meet-up. I’m looking forward to get back to balance and start blogging again. Thank you.

This Monday, a small group of Twitter enthusiasts got together in the very downtown of Belgrade to meet, interact, chat (longer than 140 characters), and have fun.  Actually, last week I’ve asked on Twitter if anyone is interested to meet up, and then set up the date and time. I’ve managed a reservation near the Politika building, and people started to gather.  Few of us appeared since it was some national holiday and many people were off town, but it was definitely nice to meet some of the new Twitterers and talk about social media, issues on Web, micro-blogging and life. All of us are in the information technologies, either programming, marketing, blogging, journalism, online media and it was easy and interesting to communicate on some things from different points of view. Check out some of the photos of this cool Serbian Twitter crew.