Twitter user evolution -effect on learning, productivity, confidence & job satisfaction

This is my personal user evolution experience. Please, share your experience & knowledge by commenting.

I've been a Twitter user since october 2009. In Finland Twitter is still an emergin platform and Facebook dominates. My wake-up call was MCPC2009 event where I was sitting next to @Grahamhill and watched him making notes of the seminar's best gold nugget insights and learnings in Twitter, filtering facts, disagreeing in some degree and presenting his case by linking to research, academic papers, cases etc. along with his insights, experience and professional learnings. I was totally impressed. That was something I couldn't believe was happening. I realized Twitter was a channel that enabled integrating in to a world of kindred spirits, learning and collaborating in an incredible way.

I became an addict at once. My first priority was to learn about open innovation and co-creation practices. Business Design is about innovation in very profound way and I was swept away with the knowledge I was getting from amazing professionals all over the world. I was like a sponge sucking every bit of information, re-tweeting the best nuggets and implementing the learnings in to the practice of my daily work.

Quite soon though I had to shut down TweetDeck while I was working. I couldn't concentrate on creating while the screen was blinking with new info all the time. I had to go and see what was going on. My work in creating got fractured and it was hard to concentrate. My desktop library of whitepapers, academic papers and cases crew at amazing speed and it was impossible to read everything I found. I started feeling I was constantly behind. I learned to take Tweets in just once a day.

In a short period of time my working and learning practices have changed profoundly. Previously it was hard work finding cases and benchmarks around the world, now I'm drowning in them. It was very difficult to bring anything new to the table as everybody was consuming same mediums and sources of information. Now there's plenty. I've got a direct channel to people's thinking, their resources, experiences and oppinions. Professionals who share the same passion and interests that I do. I've got access to worlds best mentors, really. Even if I'm in the distant corner of Europe.

The Twitter use has revolutionalized my learning methodology and the speed of adaptation. My productivity has boosted as the quality of the brainfood has improved. But I think I've now reached the next level of Twitter user evolution..

When I was 25, I published a book, Digital Business - Tomorrows reality in 2000, year later Mobile Marketing Handbook. I was young, hungry and lacked self preservation. I was confident though about my thinking and got major satisfaction about accomplishing something. Now, at this stage of Twitter User Evolution I feel like I'm digesting other peoples thinking and feel inadequate about not publishing myself. The information available is so high quality and great that I feel the bar rising. The competition is daunting. Re-Tweeting feels like accepting the fact that I haven't created something but I'm sharing other peoples thinking like a hub in between. The highest possible professional satisfaction I've ever got is from creating something totally new based on the clients problem and making it real. Now the productivity is great but the level of satisfaction and inspiration is not quite as high because I'm using other peoples learnings that they have published to me, which I haven't found and realized as insights myself.

Now I feel like I have to get back on track and gain confidence and inspiration from publishing. However, it feels extremely difficult to find a fresh perspective, something original in the middle of such overwhelming flow of great material, which eg. @grahamhill, @mashable, @chrismessina, @chrissbrogan, @eskokilpi, @business_design, and so many others are publishing. Creating their insight and refined perspective and sending it out instead of just re-Tweeting others.

Twitter user evolution for me has been 1. realizing the opportunity 2. consuming the data 3. learning to share, connect and filter 4. felt good about gaining followers 5. got frustrated on beeing a respondent instead of beein a contributor, and operating as a hub for my followers 6. gaining self confidence and satisfaction back by starting to produce and contribute. What would be the next?

What's your take on the professional Twitter user evolution? Has somebody researched peoples evolution as members in a professional Twitter community arena and their growth as professionals in it? Has anybody data on similar personal growth in co-creation and open innovation online environments?

Taivas Lab - MCPC 2009 8.10.2009

Taivas Lab & workshop: Co-creating Me

360 million people have googled Harry Potter. This means that hundreds of millions of people probably are also active enough to talk about him to others... Thus marketing the books more effectively than any ad ever could.

Companies are not statues but organic entities that evolve continuously. Customers are not a threat but an innovative and active force that can help a company in becoming stronger, more desirable and more successful.

Traditionally brands have been cocreating people, offering them means to express their identities. Today people are cocreating companies by participating in marketing or even in product development. They do this invited or uninvited. Taivas Lab looks at ways in which companies can work as Editors in Chief of themselves, letting people get involved in making a company an icon.

Viewpoints during the day will include both social and other innovative media and platforms. Cases range from Habbo Hotel, virtual world for teenagers to Forum, the central Helsinki shopping mall where two young women will live 24/7, reporting their lives and shopping through videos, photos and text entries.

Taivas Lab will consist of keynote speeches and team work sessions that utilise rapid prototyping for giving participants both thoughts and solutions to walk away with. Any participant is encouraged to provide Taivas Lab with an actual business problem to be solved during the day with colleagues and both academic and business experts.

Puhetta johtaa Rory Sutherland