Twitterific? April 15, 2009
Posted by Stacey Thornberry in Author: Stacey Thornberry, Corporate responsibility, Social media Tags: Jack Dorsey, sustainable, Twitter, Zipcar.
Last night, I went to the Zipcar for Business Earth Day Mixer at Temple nightclub in San Francisco where the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, spoke.
Some things to explain from the sentence above:
- Zipcar - a fantastic car-sharing program in more than 50 cities in North America and the U.K., now featuring business and university programs. (I’m a member.)
- Earth Day - 22 April, set aside for awareness of environmental issues and celebrations related to saving the earth.
- Twitter - the ever-growing micro-blogging site where you answer the question, “What are you doing?”, in 140 characters or less.
I attended with two of my friends, an architect who is opposed to the Twitter idea and a computer programmer who predicted the platform’s blow-up. We arrived on time at 5:30 as the Evite guest list included more than 1,600 people. Why such appeal? Our theories: free drinks and the chance to see a “celebrity.”
While mingling amongst the crowd, the architect exclaimed, “There’s the founder!” He was about two feet to my right. As I slowly inched my way closer to Mr. Dorsey, the computer “nerd” I was with pointed out the long line of people forming to talk to Jack. I was tempted to ask him, “What’s your favorite color?” While my skeptic friend said, “I want him to give me two reasons why I should join.” This later increased to three reasons. We never got the chance, as he was summoned to the front stage for his Q&A session.
Before Jack was questioned, Temple’s director of sustainability talked about the nightclub’s sustainable goals. Turns out, Temple is a sustainable business with an 89 percent diversion from landfill and other green initiatives . They’re also going to implement technology to generate energy from their patrons’ dancing!
Then the founder of Twitter took the stage. The audience had previously submitted questions and they were going to be answered. One hiccup in the plan: the crowd would not quiet down. The host of the Q&A session repeatedly asked that everyone be silent, but to no avail.
Tweets about the event using the hashtag #earthdaymixer displayed above the bar on three screens 
showed comments on this predicament, such as:
- NuriaS #earthdaymixer why can we communicate on twitter but so hard in person? I can barely hear @jack so sad
My take on the problem: don’t provide two free drinks per person and then expect them to pay attention to a Q&A 1 ½ hours after consuming said drinks. A fellow attender had a similar view.
Since I was super close to the stage, I caught quite a bit of what was being said, while others were tweeting away. 
Here are some of the highlights:
- Inspiration for Twitter was city life. Jack wanted to simulate bike messengers for all city dwellers, creating a picture of life in the city.
- If Jack were drunk and were going to sing karaoke, he would pick “Let’s Dance” by David Bowie.
- He sees Twitter as innovation in communication. Next goals? Help innovate healthcare and financial markets.
- One of the values of Twitter is being connected to people you wouldn’t otherwise meet. My favorite that Jack mentioned: Demi Moore (mrskutcher).
- Twitch was first thought for platform’s name. After looking in the dictionary under “tw,” found twitter and thought it was a perfect match (although, I can’t find the definition he used in my dictionary).
- Jack weighs 145 pounds.
- Twitter vocabulary is user generated.
- No plans to sell to Google. (I stood behind the guy who recorded this video.)
I learned quite a bit about Twitter—perhaps more than I want to know. The most interesting part for me was Jack’s favorite thing about Twitter: the face-to-face conversations that the online conversations lead to. This is something that I’ve seen many IABC members discuss on their blogs.
I’m still on the fence about Twitter. I don’t know what I’d say about myself so often in so few characters. I don’t know that I’d want to share so much with others and I don’t know why anyone would be interested. But, I do watch the conversations to try and gain some perspective. You can follow IABC on Twitter and tweet about our upcoming World Conference with the hashtag #IABC09.
For a good laugh about Twitter, watch this video.
And for more laughs, here are my favorite tweets under #earthdaymixer:
- lauraigomez Overheard at the TWITTER/Zipcar event: “I just Facebooked the shiz out of this event.” Really? Dios mio…. #earthdaymixer
- kg ‘love technology that can spark interaction’ -@jack (word) #earthdaymixer
- lauraigomez Twitter co-founder, @jack is my own geeky Brad Pitt!!! #earthdaymixer
- littlemeliss #earthdaymixer @jack 145 really? Maybe 130…
- krystha_tweets ZipCar=fail whale with this interview. Still love Twitter tho. #earthdaymixer
- olssonprescott #earthdaymixer haha loving the real-time twitter feed above the bar! http://twitpic.com/3c4p3
- lsgrodeska #earthdaymixer twitter is not this boring in real life
P.S. If you want to join Zipcar, let me know. We can split US$50 in driving credit!
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