Well, SlowTrav is using http://twitter.com/slowtrav. Now you can follow the happenings on the website (www.slowtrav.com) and the forum (www.slowtalk.com) with updates to your home page as we send out occasional "tweets" (aka messages) letting you know what’s going on.
What is Twitter?
Simply put, an easy way for you (and us) to let others know what’s going on in our lives (or here on the forums or website) with quick easy notes of 140 characters or less, simply answering the question, “What Are You Doing?” As a member of twitter, you decide whose tweets you’d like to see on your Twitter home page (aka follow) whenever you login to Twitter. You can also set your tweets to private, so that only members you approve can follow your messages. Here’s a sample of what some of the messages on your home page may look like (it’s what mine looks like).
How Do You Follow SlowTrav on Twitter?
Simply join Twitter using a valid e-mail address. Once that’s done, you click on the Twitter link in our sidebar and under the SlowTrav logo, click “follow.” After that, you’ll receive messages on your Twitter home page whenever something new and interesting is published on the website and/or some interesting discussions are taking place on the forums.
Some questions for you to consider thinking about: What are your personal values? What do you want your personal brand and values to be? How can you use Twitter as a tool to help you grow as a person and be happier? If you've ever vented on Twitter, do you think you would be happier if you thought of Twitter as a tool for you to reframe your perspective?
Posts: 16349 | Location: The Beautiful San Francisco Bay Area | Registered: 06 August 2001
Originally posted by Madonna del Piatto: I am just resurrecting this thread as I was wondering which ST members are on Twitter, is there a way to find out?
Letizia, I don't know any way to find out who from ST is on Twitter, other than to ask as you did!
I used the twitter search tool http://search.twitter.com to search on "SlowTrav" and "Slow Travel," but the results were mostly SlowTrav tweets.
Posts: 16349 | Location: The Beautiful San Francisco Bay Area | Registered: 06 August 2001
For those of you on Twitter, I just discovered this site: http://twibbon.com . It includes various electronic ribbons and logos to overlay on to your Twitter profile picture.
I used it to add a San Francisco Giants logo to mine (as the race towards the MLB playoffs heats up).
Posts: 16349 | Location: The Beautiful San Francisco Bay Area | Registered: 06 August 2001
What are your personal values? What do you want your personal brand and values to be? do you think you would be happier if you thought of Twitter as a tool for you to reframe your perspective?
Please don't take this the wrong way, I am looking at this from the perspective of the puzzled, not a critic. I don't get it!
Can somebody enlighten me as to the attraction of Twitter - what do you get out of it. The quoted piece above leaves me completely cold - "Personal Brand" "Reframe your perspectives" !!!
I do not consider myself a luddite. I love computers, I enjoy reading travel pieces and blogs, I thoroughly enjoy Slowtravel (both the concept and this forum) but 140 character snippets?
TimW
Posts: 1010 | Location: Hampshire, UK | Registered: 28 March 2005
I hear you Tim. Many people/businesses use this as another method of marketing. Me, I use it to just keep friends and family up to date on my comings and goings (often I update my facebook at the same time), when I'm too busy to update my blog (which I must do). Then when I do update my blog, I use it to let those friends and family members know I updated my blog.
Oh, and from a SlowTrav perspective, not all of our members check the forums frequently, so we use Twitter/Facebook, to let them know when there are new and interesting articles to check out and/or discussions going on.
we use Twitter/Facebook, to let them know when there are new and interesting articles to check out and/or discussions going on.
Again, don't take this the wrong way, but this is why I am not a "fan" of Slow Trav on Facebook. If I want to know what's happening on Slow Trav, I look at Slow Trav. I've found that becoming a "fan" of a business on Facebook just loads more posts than I care to see.
Can't imagine that there are Slow Trav fans on Facebook (or whatever the equivalent is on Twitter) who don't read Slow Trav often enough to know what's new. (Maybe in my case this is a leftover from having had a nagging mother? )
Can't imagine that there are Slow Trav fans on Facebook (or whatever the equivalent is on Twitter) who don't read Slow Trav often enough to know what's new.
Actually there are.
There are people who find us on Facebook first, post their questions, and then I refer them to here and they've joined. We actually have a few fans on facebook that aren't registered members here but get updates and I'm assume come over to read/lurk.
OK, I stand corrected. I guess I meant to say people already "on" ST, who might check here as often as suits them. New business is, of course, good for the business.
I'm on Twitter as 'artnbarb', but since I can only access it on the computer, I rarely check in! I DO check FB every day, and ST etc etc. Just trying to keep my blog up-to-date is challenging enough!
Agree, Marian. Them, and probably anyone who is following their travels.
Tweeting is almost like a haiku - how can you say what you want to say, get your point across, or even create interest, in 140 characters or less. Consider it mini-blogging, and that may frame it in a different light.
It's also an amazing way to network. I think I have found out about some news, events, neat you-tube videos, trends, and the like - days before they became common knowledge or "hot" items - from Twittering.
No, thanks. I lead such a dull life. I certainly can't think of anything I want to be reminded of on a minute-to-minute basis, or even day-to-day. And I really can't imagine that anyone would have the slightest interest in my mundane doings, so I will spare the world any haiku-like gems of the 140-character-or-less variety... "I'm sitting on the patio..."
Facebook seems a perfect way for people to try to sell me stuff and for alumni fundraisers and other high-school bullies to track me down like a bloodhound.
I am making fun of something I really know nothing about. But I do have a point.
I love the internet. I read lots of papers and articles on-line. Google Books is amazing.I check in on a few blogs, Mary Beard's for one. And Palma's and Cindy Ruth's, to see what I am not having for dinner. I certainly value highly Slowtalk and Slowtrav. They sites are well thought-out and informative (thanks, Pauline) and well-run (thanks, moderators.)
But I bear a slight resentment when I am reading a dead-tree magazine or newspaper and am instructed to go to the web-site for the REAL story. That's why I bought the thing, to have an editor tell me what is important. If we all tried to get our news from blogs and tweets, we'd be in a worse mess than we are.
So I have this nagging suspicion that perhaps the real fun parts of Slowtalk and Slowtrav, and the informative parts, will somehow be herded off into Facebook-Twitterland, where the cool kids will know the inside scoop, while the rest of us will remain outside. To descend to bizschoolspeak, this is diluting the brand.
I may be a bit repetitive here in my "old curmudgeon" role, but I've been thinking about two developments that I now realize may be related.
(1) Many, if not most, new ST posters appear to be in travel-related businesses or wish to be.
(2) Slow Trav has begun to participate in Twitter.
At any rate, I still enjoy the Travel Forums for good information --- when I ask questions, I get a good number of informative answers. And I try to add information when I can, such as about events in the NY metro area. But I don't find much to read in the forum posts, perhaps because of (1) and (2) above but also because of the number of ST posters who see the name on Twitter and post very basic questions. Not to mention the number of bloggers and business people who post just for the sake of their signature appearing and possibly being "clicked".
I find Twitter a bit less than pointless ---- but I do enjoy Facebook. As I said above, I am not a Facebook "fan" of ST ----- or any other commercial venture not directly owned by friends --- because I don't like to get all the commercial posts and the concomitant loss of privacy that comes with fanship. But I do find Facebook a good means of keeping up to date with my friends from various communities, all in one place (and we grandparents get to show our friends pictures... For a while, this was true of the Everything Else and Food forums, but (again, IMHO) these are now serving a smaller and smaller audience. This is not by design, I don't think, but just de facto. (And I blame part of it on the popularity of reality shows and "face-off" shows!)
As for keeping up with new trends on Twitter ---- if it's ONLY on Twitter, it's not important enough for me to know about; life is just too short! I enjoy newspapers and periodicals for those purposes, and read some online as well.
Well, I am nattering on here. But Robert's post struck a chord.
I am with Marian and Robert on this one. To me twittering means to rattle on about absolutely nothing.
Having established that I guess I am happy to say that I do not twitter - but please don't be insulted by my personal neurosis. Heck I am only just beginning to get the hang of Facebook, but I do see the value of FB in keeping up with wider groups of aquaintances, much like a notice board.
I too miss many of the characters who no longer post on ST (remember Alice and Ginger?). I miss the great debates, even those that became a little heated - well especially those. And I miss the fun (remember the old toilet and bidet thread?).
I suppose this is a natural evolution. Many of the old posters are now writing their own blogs so to post on ST is redundant. Beside, who has time to write a blog, comment on other blogs, post on Facebook, twitter AND visit ST??
I agree, Sheena, it does take a lot of time, and diligence. Time I have, since you all know that my job has a lot of downtime, but I cannot make my brain spend any more time than it already does in so many places.
That said, many of you also know that I have finally caved and made my Facebook book a functioning place, just this past weekend. I think I did it because I felt I was missing out on a lot of ST conversations, and I probably will be reading more than posting. I cannot even keep up with my "reluctant" blog, in part because I don't find thinking of things to say everyday all that interesting. I like to use it more for travels, as a journal for myself, that and the weekly cooking things we have been doing. As an aside, I love that Robert checks on certain blogs to see what he is not cooking for dinner that night.
I have also had a certain reluctance about FB because I do not want to be found by my childrens' friends, nor do I want to check into the lives of long ago high school "where we ever really friends anyway?" I know some people love this, but I am happy to live in the present. My children do not use FB very much themselves, they say that they are way too busy, and that's fine - thinking of setting up an extended family thing for the cousins. Later, later.
But I also say "never say never" - and that may well apply to Twitter. Since I don't feel the need to do any professional networking with it, and I don't think in Haiku, I will be staying away from that at the moment. I don't feel negative really about these new communication forms, I just don't think I personally need to be everywhere with them.
More to the point, I think I am going to do more reading with my free time this school year, that and trip planning.
I also recently signed up for Facebook, but only so that I can see what my kids are doing. Actually, I started it when my son was driving across the country and using FB to post daily updates and photo albums.
I don't use it at all for myself. I almost always say yes when people (usually ST people) ask to "friend" me, but it's only so as not to look unfriendly, since I never post anything about myself, and only an occasional comment on my kids' pages.
Like you, Marcia, I have no interest in being found by people from my long-ago past. I have enough trouble staying in touch with the friends I have chosen to keep up with, and I would rather do it personally and privately instead of in public.
I suppose it's partly a generational thing, since younger people seem to be perfectly comfortable with living their lives online, but it's not something I want to do. And like Robert and Marian, I can't see the point in posting or reading daily mundane minutiae. Of course, I'm also one of those people whose cell phone is usually turned off, and I don't even text!
- Roz
P.S. I just happened to read this article in the NY Times which brings up another issue regarding Facebook and Twitter. Both of them are increasingly tools for marketing and advertisers -- not something I'm interested in participating in.
And I just remembered this funny conversation that I had with my youngest yesterday about "playing in their sandbox" as I like to put it. She pointed out that since they are now 24, 27 and 29, if they were actually using FB, they would most likely not be posting anything that a parent could not read. So that does make it a more thoughtful idea, since I have nieces and nephews with children, some of whom probably are sharing pictures with each other. And just today I noticed my new DIL pop up as a potential "friend" - I think I will talk to them about this when we next visit. I'm ok not actually being FB friends with my children right now, but I am curious as to what the rest of them are thinking. Perhaps it is a good thing that they are older; I cringe when I read articles about the helicopter parents checking in constantly on FB to see what their college kids are up to; not everyone may feel this way, but I need boundaries.
And honestly, I don't think my children are all that interested in my Slow Travel life .
Which is why, on Facebook, I avoid becoming "Friends" with or "Fans" of commercial entities. In fact, I've recently severed connections with a few of these just because of privacy concerns. I already regret accepting the friend requests of people in my community that I don't know very well, as I see that what they really want to do is promote their band, or whatever. Too awkward now to "unfriend".
Here is an Emily Dickinson poem that a friend send me--she said someone she invited to be her friend on FB sent it to her:
How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!
It gave me a good laugh and yes I am on FB so I can see our son and his girlfriends photos and joined twitter duirng the Iran riots to understand how it works and then to follow Lance Armstrong during the Tour de France.
Posts: 322 | Location: Fremont, CA, USA | Registered: 15 September 2006
All groups and organizations evolve and change - families, friends, churches (that one is particularly relevant in my life these days) and businesses.
The hardest thing to manage while changing and growing is holding on to core values, so that both new and old members feel included and relevant, and remain interested and involved.
When I think about it, one of the key values of Slowtrav that drew me in and kept me here over the years was the aspect of travelers helping travelers. I always knew that business owners were a part of that, in fact, the very first person to reach out and help me resolve some questions was a business owner in Italy. I also always felt that the participation of business owners was carefully managed, to prevent the site and forums from becoming a primarly "professional" advertising and marketing site that also happened to have some "amateur" input.
Over the last couple of years, however, it feels like the need to grow (and perhaps meet corporate objectives?) has led to a relaxation of rules that threatens the very balance that makes Slowtrav an attractive place for me. Also, as members have evolved their avocation for travel into vocations and businesses, conflicts of interest have risen into the ranks of moderators. It is troublesome to me, as I want to believe the best about my virtual (and actual, in several cases) friends, but some of the changes do cause me to question what our shared values are, and if I still fit with them.
ellen
Posts: 4324 | Location: mahwah, new jersey, usa | Registered: 10 December 2003
Topic Closed
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And I miss the fun (remember the old toilet and bidet thread?). 
