Comedians show up on Twitter (and tell a few jokes)

I've noticed an emerging subset of people on Twitter: comics. Over the past 2 years, famous standup comedians took to the tweetscape, initially for promotional purposes. And at first, it was a lot of this:

LouisCK: Okay. Tonight. at 10:30pm. on FX. It's the Season 2 premiere of LOUIE. Please watch it with your face.

Over time, these comedians began to build followings and their colleagues joined the fray. Somewhere along the way (and I don t remember specifically when this was), the 140-character tweet became a challenge: how funny can one be within the confines of 140 characters? This challenge continued to evolve: first, previously established standups began using twitter as a wet stone to sharpen their comedic skills, forcing them to melt down an entire act into short jokes. The influx of standups fostered a community of new comics without audiences who simply wrote jokes all day. Often it was crass stuff, but over the past year, it s started to get a lot of attention. Megan Amram tweeted her way into the writer s room for the 2011 Academy Awards and her own sitcom. Longtime blogger (and parent) Kelly Oxford started to use twitter to hone her joke-writing skills and eventually connected with Jimmy Kimmel and Jessica Alba; now she has a development deal with CBS and over 150,000 followers.

Twitter is often seen as a way to promote work that exists in another medium. For comics and writers who can tell jokes, as it turns out, Twitter is that medium.

Banner Ads! Press Releases!

This might sound crazy, but go with me for a minute.

With the advent (and proliferation) of the internet, it's a lot easier for people to communicate. It used to take days/weeks/dog years for companies to get information about a new product to potential customers. But now it can be on a website in a matter of seconds. Two clicks and a dozen keystrokes and you're poised to view all manner of content from any brand you can think of.

Wild, huh?!

With so much info available to so many people at all times, the ways businesses interact with the public is changing. Social media is the new black: it looks good on everyone and can be as formal or as casual as the situation requires.

Which is cool....except it totally changes the way most companies are interacting with the public. Banner ads and press releases are no longer the communications vehicles du jour. In many cases, customer service is the marketing and knowing who and when to engage online is as mission critical as an effective business model.

At yesterday's IABC morning session, this was the topic up for discussion. Rob McMurtrie (resident measurement guru) and Brad McCormick (Austin-based social media nerd) shared some guidelines and some pitfalls to avoid when interacting with customers online.

Stay tuned for the full content of their presentation and the reaction from local business communicators!

Oh no you didn't!

This is the response of jilted ex-girlfriends, former roommates, ex-employees and others who have suffered the indignity of being "unfriended". With so much of our lives and personal relationships taking place online, the "unfriending" is almost as hurtful as the break-up...sometimes moreso, thanks to its passive-aggressiveness.

And yes, "unfriend" is the correct term for that action, at least according to the AP, which has expanded its style guide to include 42 new rules for social media. Among the new rules are the change from "Web site" to "website" as the proper reference for an online destination and asserting that "fan", "friend" and "follow" can be used both as nouns and as verbs.

If your sore thumbs and reflex-like full body twitch toward your "smart phone" (which is now officially two words, rather than a compound word) every time you hear something funny didnt clue you in, it's now official: social media is here to stay.

Check out the new 2010 AP Stylebook for the new rules as well as explanations of acronyms and jargon that have popped up with the proliferation of social media. And learn that "POS" no longer has anything to do with your 1986 Buick Le Sabre, with the drooping ceiling, duct taped door panels and trunk that latches with a bungee cord.

Tweet Out To Seattle

Wondering who's on Twitter in Seattle? Thanks to Monica Guzman from the Seattle PI's Big Blog you don't have to wonder any longer. Monica (@moniguzman) has taken advantage of Twitter's new list feature and has created a list based on the news section of Seattle Twitter Index: http://twitter.com/moniguzman/seattlenews

There is currently a working list being created on thebigblog now of local entities using the popular broadcasting tool. Find anyone from local government officials to Seattle Sport organizations. Go here to check it out: http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/archives/157088.asp

For a working list of all newspaper accounts on Twitter you can go here. 

The lights are off and everyone is home

If you live in the lower Queen Anne area, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

This weekend, LQA folks experienced two power outages    that lasted between 1.5 – 3 hours long, depending on where you were located.

Seattle City Light (@SEACityLight) had a helpful tweet on Friday that stated:

“Planned outage for maintenance Sat. AM near Seattle Center. Affected customers were notified directly. More at http://powerlines.seattle.gov”

So there was a planned outage for Saturday morning that should have lasted from 12 am – 8 am. Cool, those are hours when most people are either not home, at home asleep, or crawling back home inebriated from that evening’s festivities. I’m not entirely sure what happened (if the scheduled event took place) but an outage took place from about 9 am – 12 pm. Yeah, not such good timing.

Not sure what you were doing around that time but I had just gotten home from the gym and was ready to start my weekend by hopping into the shower… when the power went out. Fortunately, I could wait it out (the beauty of a lazy Saturday is that you can be lazy) but I know folks in my apartment building were doing laundry, cooking and, if you were my roommate, getting ready for a wedding.

When the power first went out, I immediately jumped online (via my handy dandy iPhone) and looked up Seattle City Light contact info. I dialed the “Report an Outage” hotline… and got a busy signal. I stared at my phone for a minute, in disbelief (“What is this, 1998? A busy signal? In this day and age??”) before I jumped on Twitter.

I did a quick search for “Outage” and “Queen Anne” and found a plethora of folks who were going through the same thing I was:

It didn’t make me feel better (because… yeah, I just wanted power back) but it did comfort me a little. Now I knew that it wasn’t just my building affected, it was lower Queen Anne. But most importantly- I wasn’t alone!

I then tweeted King 5 (@King5Seattle) to ask them if they had heard anything. The response was prompt:

I continued tracking all of this on Twitter until the power in my building came back on. I even sent a couple of tweets to @SEACityLight but got no response. It later turned out that something had happened to a feeder… or something. I don’t really know the specifics but it resulted in thousands of people going without power for a couple of hours.

Sunday night rolls around and the same thing happens. Lights flicker and then go out. I immediately jump on Twitter to see what’s going on and if I can find any helpful information. Once again, I get more info from people around me and from @KING5Seattle than I do from @SEACityLight or their website.

So what’s the lesson here, kids? Well, Twitter is effing useful in situations where you don’t have access to TV and online sites are updated too slow. I got all my information about the outage, its parameters and cause through people on Twitter than I did from anywhere else.

I’m sending out good karma vibes to @KING5Seattle- whoever manages that handle is fantastic! They were on the outage like white on rice as well as other local news- I do hope that person got some sleep last night.

So even if Twitter is just a fad, it certainly helped me get through a power AND news blackout. I don’t think it helped get the power back on by any means (although it may have helped the news desks at several local stations hear about the situation first) but it did help one person not feel so freaked out and alone.

I even made a new friend (Here’s looking at you @GourleyGirl) and some people could find the humor in the event:

 

I knew the Decepticons were up to no good!

For info on what to do when a power outage happens, check out the Seattle City site: http://www.cityofseattle.net/light/neighborhoods/nh4_pout.htm

If you want to report a power outage, dial these numbers:

Seattle City Lights Customer Service at 206.684.3000.

Outage Hotline (recorded message) at 206.684.7400.

Edited to note: Check out @QueenAnneView on Twitter for news around, you guessed it- Queen Anne. They were also tweeting about the outage this weekend and posted quick updates on their blog: http://www.queenanneview.com/ 

…or check Twitter. That’s what I did…