Some organizations have this policy that social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. are a waste of time and therefore ban their staff from using such sites during office hours.
Then you also have companies that have no such rules in place and allow unrestricted access to the web as long as the employees are able to deliver what's expected.
A. When Twitter is Not Allowed in Office
If you don't have a data-plan on your phone and cannot resist that urge to tweet ever 10 minutes, you may use tools like Posterous or Nutshell that allow anyone to send and receive tweets through regular office email.
These sites offer a fresh interface to your Twitter account with all the regular features (retweets, @replies, etc.) but the more interesting part is that they will work even if Twitter domain is inaccessible from your office computer. You can track up to 5 accounts with Brizzly.
You can then follow tweets from your friends using Outlook or any other newsreader. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the friend's feed directly with FeedDemon provided that access to Twitter is open in your office.
If you are allowed to use IM clients in Office, you can add twitter@twitter.com as a buddy in Google Talk and send tweets through IM. TweetSwitch is another free service that lets you send and receive tweets through popular instant messaging clients including AIM, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Skype and GTalk.
B. Use Twitter Without Letting Anyone Know
Now let's look at the second category – you are very much allowed to use Twitter at work but you still don't want to give your boss an impression that you are a Twitter addict.
In that case, here's what you can do to possibly hide your Twitter addiction from boss and colleagues.
Quitter is a simple twitter client that runs through the command prompt or the DOS window. With Quitter, you can read and reply to tweets, follow /unfollow people or even manage your direct messages. All you need is a Windows computer and no one in the office will ever have a clue that you are engrossed in Twitter.
With SpreadTweet, you can send and receive updates, @replies and direct messages all inside an application that looks like a clone of Excel 2007.
The other great option for Microsoft Office users in TwInbox – you probably have Outlook open on your screen all the time and this free Outlook add-in will simply turn your Outlook into a powerful Twitter client.
There's more – all standard Outlook features like search, mail archiving, categories, etc. will also become available to your Tweets. This screencast explains TwInbox in detail.
Related: Do Interesting Things With Twitter
How to Use Twitter During Office Hours
Comedy Duo Hopes Social Media Power Will Secure Slot on Showtime
Undoubtedly, social media is a powerful force. It can be used as a way to spread breaking news, organize political protests or energize campaigns, and, of course, to promote various brands and individuals. But can social media help a TV pilot ascend from reject bin to series pickup? Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo — the stars and creators of Ronna and Beverly — sure hope so.
The duo is already getting tons of attention for their sitcom; The Wall Street Journal and Mediaite both feature write-ups about the show and its creators' quest to use social media to put the show on Showtime's schedule. Thus far the two actresses have succeeded in getting Showtime to air the pilot twice and drum up some media coverage in the process.
Social Media Takes Aim at Prime Time
Ronna and Beverly is a sitcom about two fifty-something Bostonian yentas who have authored a self help book, You'll Do A Little Better Next Time: A Guide to Marriage & Remarriage for Jewish Singles. Born out of an Upright Citizens Brigade sketch that thirty-somethings Chaffin and Denbo created three years ago, Ronna and Beverly is kind of a mixture of Kath & Kim and Absolutely Fabulous. Showtime commissioned a pilot in 2008, but declined to pick up the show this past spring (Showtime actually declined to take any pilots to series, instead focusing on its existing roster of shows like Dexter, Weeds and Nurse Jackie).
However, Showtime ended up saying it would air the pilot before the end of 2009 for "tax purposes." Denbo and Chaffin then did what any self-respecting L.A. comedian would do: They took their cause to their famous friends and to Twitter. Soon, individuals like Diablo Cody, Mindy Kaling, Rainn Wilson and Joel Stein took to tweeting pleas to their followers, instructing them to DVR and watch the show. Considering that some of these individuals have more than a million followers, it was a good way to try to spread the word. The pilot aired on December 22 and again at midnight last night.
The hope is that the online buzz will translate into offline viewers.
Risky Proposition
As exciting as it is to frame the Ronna and Beverly campaign as potentially groundbreaking — after all, it would be a great coda to the story to say that a grassroots social media campaign got a show pickup — we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that this is still a risky proposition, and one that has failed more than once before.
Although social media and online campaigns have had an impact on many other mediums, television has remained an elusive nut to crack. Campaigns to get followers to tune into television premieres have consistently failed (or failed to sustain themselves after the initial flurry is over) and online-specific campaigns to take a show to the small screen have been equally unsuccessful.
In 2005, Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence — as well as Scrubs and Family Guy writers Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan — created a pilot for what was then The WB network called Nobody's Watching. The WB declined to pick up the show, but undeterred, the pilot was leaked to YouTube in June 2006.
The show became a YouTube sensation, with coverage across industry magazines, The New York Times and other outlets. In fact, the initial buzz was so strong that there seemed to be promise and confirmation that the show would get picked up by NBC. Despite additional webisodes, plans for a full pickup never actually materialized and the actors and writers all moved on to other projects.
Likewise, when TV veterans Marshall Herkovitz and Edward Zwick's TV show Quarterlife — which was developed alongside a social networking site of the same name — couldn't get network pickup in 2007, it aired on YouTube and MySpace instead. Despite relatively high totals for the webisodes, when NBC actually picked up the show in February 2008, the ratings were the worst for that time-period on the network in more than 17 years.
The Outcome and the Future
Ronna and Beverly won't necessarily meet the same fate as Nobody's Watching or Quarterlife, but even if the show does fail to get pickup, the attempt to use social media to try to create or inform an audience won't be in vain.
For Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo, the exposure — online and off — can only be positive. Furthermore, lessons learned about cultivating online communities and spreading the word can be used in future projects as well.
What do you think of social media's potential role in shaping or impacting television programming?
Tags: ronna and beverly, Showtime, television, tv, twitter
New Twitter Worm Promises More Followers [ALERT]
Just in time for the end of the holiday season: We've received multiple reports that a new worm that promises the gift of more followers is spreading quickly on Twitter. Unfortunately, the only thing that the sites involved seem to do is use your account to spam your followers.
One of the sites involved asks for your Twitter username and password and appears to be associated with the Twitter account @GetFreeFollowers, which has been suspended by Twitter. Another that I came across may be far more damaging, as it appears to be spreading malware through what look to be YouTube videos (but actually work like Koobface). A similar scam also seems to be fairly widespread in Portuguese.
We're still digging to get to the bottom of this scam, but with "Twitter Followers" hitting trending topics, it's clear many people are falling for something today. We'll update when we know more — in the meantime, be sure to keep your credentials safe and be dubious of video links.
Who's got Twitter’s control??
Ya sabemos que la red social Twitter fue víctima el pasado jueves de un ataque de redireccionamiento por un par de horas (un ataque a los servidores que alojan los records de DNS de twitter, servicio que le provee una empresa llamada DYN). Lo interesante de esto no es el ataque en sí (no es la primera vez y probablemente no será la última) sino el hecho de que ha sido producido por parte de un grupo autodenominado "Ejército Cibernético Iraní" (sin comentarios) probablemente al servicio del gobierno de esa nación.
El mensaje es claro, siendo un símbolo de la guerra mediática de Occidente contra la dictadura iraní y una red social con millones de usuarios, atacar a twitter es una magnífica venganza de las afrentas pasadas. Como recordamos Twitter fue muy utilizada durante las turbias elecciones iraníes del año que culmina, en las que el infausto Mahmud Ahmadinejad salió reelecto y fueron silenciadas violentamente las manifestaciones en su contra y las acusaciones de fraude. Entonces cientos de iraníes en el ejercicio de periodismo ciudadano más masivo del que tengo noticia, esquivaron la censura a través de twitter contando al mundo – live – la realidad de lo que acontecía en un Irán clausurado para las agencias de noticias.
Sin embargo todo el acontecimiento mueve a risa. Primero porque ni siquiera fue un ataque directo a la aplicación o a las bases de datos de twitter (aunque fue efectivo el resultado, no deja de ser guerra de guerrillas, y para colmo el "enemigo" queda físicamente intacto), segundo por el nombre elegido por el grupo de informáticos atacantes, (busco un adjetivo pero no me acabo de decidir entre infantil o ridículo), y por último por el mensaje de texto que aparecía en la pantalla a la que eras redireccionado tratando de accesar a twitter:
Iranian Cyber Army
THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY
iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM
U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But THey Don't, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To….
Y la reflexión que quiero compartir en este post es ésta. Un gobierno desprestigiado por su propia actuación en la arena internacional y por el trato que da a sus ciudadanos utiliza a sus ingenieros para que se porten mal por internet y reclamen para sí "el verdadero control, el poder".
No estoy de acuerdo. No es muestra de poder sacar por unas horas un servicio del que se benefician millones de personas. Ningún pueblo ha alcanzado la gloria destruyendo caminos o acueductos, construyéndolos sí. Muestra de poder es fundar, administrar adecuadamente, mantenerse funcionando. Eso es lo admirable: la idea visionaria, el espíritu dispuesto. Como mismo no es muestra de poder lanzarse con aviones contra dos edificios, poner bombas en los autobuses londinenses, o en el metro de Madrid. Admirable realmente es construir un metro como el metro de Madrid.
Volvemos a lo mismo. Muchachos grandes jugando a ser malos porque su jefe se pone muy bravo cuando lo critican, así que les manda a hacerles maldades a los vecinos. Hay quienes sólo sirven para tirar piedras, no les pidas que las pongan en orden y construyan una casa.
