This morning on Facebook, my favorite chef, Michael Symon posted the following:

Chef Symon sends his tweets to his Facebook fanpage automatically, but still monitors comments and wall posts when he has time. Recently, he had shut down fans’ ability to post on his wall because of the ever-present troll factor that got to be too much to manage. I can see why he would prefer Twitter over Facebook for communication.

But the comments on his post above are interesting and eye-opening because his fans are not journalists, or tech mavens. They are teachers or stay-at-home parents, or students, or clerks – in other words they are a cross-section of the majority of everyday people. And boy, quite a few of them hate Twitter. Or they refuse to learn it.

Check out some of the comments:

All of these popped my little bubble, so to speak, and made me realize that as much as I love and adore Twitter, I really am not sure it will ever be what Facebook is (or what Google Plus hopes to be.) While frustrating, these people make good points about communication and ease of use. To me, Twitter is easier to understand than Facebook, but then I’ve been on it for years so of course I “get it.” Coming into it cold, however, I can now see why it seems overwhelming. There’s no immediacy of feedback like there is on Facebook. If I join Facebook it’s because I already know friends and family using it. If I join Twitter, I can pretty much follow celebrities I like but finding my friends and family there is not easy and if I tweet anything it feels like I’m tweeting in a void.

Now, I have always said that Twitter is what you put into it. That is the mantra for any social network. If you barely use it, of course it will be useless to you. You have to expend some effort – especially on Twitter and I think that’s where Twitter degrades for new users.

Twitter needs to educate “newbies” when they sign up – not inundate them with famous people they can follow. It feels like Twitter expects people to “get it” from the outset when it should be investing time and screen space in ensuring that they get it once they are fully signed up. It needs to find a way to hang onto new users and find a better way to connect them to people they already know and who will @reply back to them. Perhaps a dedicated group of Twitter employees to engage with new users or I don’t know, someone code a ‘bot or something that tweets back and forth with newbies and walks them through the language of ‘tweets’ and ‘mentions’ and ‘@replies’ and ‘retweets.’

I just don’t think Twitter is helping itself very much by just signing people up and expecting them to get it.

I just overheard a reporter say, “I hate that tweeting shit” in reference to the fact that the questions he had answered for his story were already tweeted. My heart died a little because I feel like I must not be doing my job properly.

I’ve been tweeting for the paper since 2007 and have trained and advocated and occasionally nagged everyone to get on the Twitter train. Some did, and some never ever will. But this person has a love/hate relationship with it and I can’t make him understand a) how it works and b) why it’s a good thing.

Things have changed. People want their news and information about 2-10 seconds after it happens, so that they can simply know about it. Once they are interested in an unfolding story, they will usually take the time to look for the in-depth articles that our reporters are so good at. They will want more details that can only be provided after everything is verified, fact-checked, sourced, and put together in a cohesive story. There’s room for both instant news, and fuller, in-depth news. One reaches a certain audience, and the other reaches them and everyone else.

Journalists should be embracing this stuff because it’s not going away. Learn how to adapt already, because I’m tired of banging my head against brick walls.

My coworker, who is anxiously awaiting the Verizon iPhone and declined to get a Droid in anticipation of the Verizon iPhone, was thrown by Palmer’s blog post particularly because she talks about the cost of switching from AT&T and the fact that Apple will likely announce a spanky new phone later this year. He’s worried about tying himself to a 2-year contract for the phone now if something faster and better will be on the way in just a few months.

This is what annoys me a little about the flurry of posts touting the pros and cons of the new Verizon iPhone – no one takes into consideration the fact that things are different out here in the flyover states. Unless we live in Lincoln or Omaha, Nebraska, we’ve never had access to iPhones at all.

Thank goodness for the Droid!

So should anyone around my part of the world have the same fears about theViPhone as my coworker, I’ll tell you what I told him: If your current Verizon contract is due for an upgrade, go ahead and get the new iPhone. Yes, you’ll have to buy the phone still, but it’s pretty spiffy and you won’t regret it. As far as speed and knowing that 4G speed is becoming the norm – in more populated areas first of course – it will likely be a while before that lightning fast LTE or 4G hits Grand Island, Nebraska so to me, the 2-year contract thing isn’t a big deal. In 2 years, there will likely be an even better iPhone coming out. Besides, Verizon’s 3G network is pretty fast and unless you are a super power-user, you’re not likely to care much. But the one thing that makes getting the ViPhone worth it, in my mind, is the wi-fi hotspot capability.

That alone is pretty fantastic. I don’t have a smartphone at all – I rely on my iPod Touch 4 and the Verizon Mi-Fi. I use it for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, email, Evernote, games, paying for my mochas, texting, and with some jiggery-pokery, a phone. Rarely do I actually use it as an iPod, funnily enough. With wi-fi becoming so available, even here in the sticks, in time I don’t even think I’ll need the mi-fi anymore.

So, my recommendation based on what I know about living in the land that tech sites forgot, and based on being quite a gadget whore, I say it’s ok for you undecided Nebraskans to go ahead and get yourself the new Verizon iPhone when it’s unleashed. You’ll love it.

[For the record, I have nothing against Droids and would be perfectly happy with one if I didn't love my iPod Touch so much.]

We had a brief period of excitement when it looked like we might be able to finagle a couple of Droids for newsroom use and I had visions of live tweets from pressers and games and breaking stories. I had fantasies of reporters who finally had that big old light bulb go off when they saw how much their work is enhanced by using a Droid and how effective Twitter is at communication.

Well that got squashed pretty quickly in corporate red tape and well, we have no droids and my newsroom is once again too busy getting their stories in for print (and web, often as an afterthought) to fuss with Twitter. I’m back at square one and it’s killing me pretty good. I just don’t know if I can handle starting at the bottom of the hill again. I’m like the Sisyphus of Social Media. And in the meantime, I see our competitors leaving us in the dust because they’ve embraced it.

Let me just say here that I believe the staff here is phenomenally talented at what they do, and have been doing for years. They’ve got experience, great contacts in the community, they’re creative and they are some of the best. I just wish I could find a way that isn’t patronizing or insulting to reach them and switch on that light bulb so that they see what I’m trying to give them is another way to enhance their work, their careers, and at the same time, make a lot of it easier. I want to help, but instead I feel sometimes that I’m seen as a brick wall they can’t be bothered to climb.

Having said that, we still need a solution to the problem of regularly updated content for the web. We still need to be using Twitter and Facebook and Storify and every tool we can get our hands on to make my newspaper THE place to get your local news.

To that end, we’ve been kicking around the idea of just sending me out with the reporters to do that stuff. It makes sense in a, “Why didn’t we think of that before?” kind of way.  We’re not going to change minds in the newsroom by constantly hammering away at them. Ever been lectured by a parent? Ever tuned them out while they lectured? That’s what happens in a newsroom – well mine at least. So let’s just do it ourselves. I’ve been live-tweeting stuff for years. I can juggle my iPhone, various apps (hello AudioBoo!), cameras and finesse wi-fi in the strangest places. So let’s stop moaning about a newsroom that doesn’t “get it” and just show them. They can still whip out their pencils and digital recorders and write their stories when they get back, and meanwhile, I’ll have continual updates going out instantly, and then Storify them when *I* get back.

I will either piss off my comrades, or they will get to see how this stuff works in action and maybe have a light bulb moment.

Along comes your ad rep from your local newspaper and he/she has something new to offer you outside of the usual banner ads and 3X5 print ads and corner peels and interstitials (inter-huh?). This time they mention something about helping you get on tools like Twitter and Facebook. And after they do that, they tell you that for a nominal monthly fee, your business will be in prime real estate, beachfront property on their very heavily-trafficked website (Yay, AP says I can type ‘website’ now! Oh wait, I’ve been doing that for years.)

Well hell, what a deal! Sign me up!

Okay, now imagine you are me. You’re @stephromanski (I’m testing the WP plugin for @anywhere there, sorry) and you’ve begun getting these businesses set up on Twitter and Facebook. Once they’re good to go, the business person will be in charge of their own destiny there and they can tweet and/or post status updates as much as they want.

But here is your minor dilemma: You know they’ll mainly be using one of those tools, either Facebook or Twitter. So if they choose to use Facebook for all their updating, you have to feed those updates to their Twitter account so that those tweets will populate your advertiser Twitter List widget that sits on the prime beachfront property. BUT if they predominantly use Twitter to update, you have to rely on a dodgy Facebook app that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t for feeding tweets to their Facebook fanpage.

Which is the better option for the businessperson who is usually too busy and may not fully “get” how to use the tools? Which way would be easier for them?

The argument for having them use Facebook is that they are already likely to have a personal Facebook page and perhaps they sort of know their way around it whereas Twitter is completely foreign to them. I know @ev addressed Twitter’s usability at their Chirp conference and I found myself nodding furiously at that whole section of his speech.

On the other hand, if the advertiser is not on either tool, which is the best way to guide them? Fanpages are kind of a bitch to work with, IMO. It seems like it would be harder to teach them (oh yes, in addition to setting them up, you must then spend an hour or so with them and teach them how to use it) to get to and update the fanpage then it would be to teach them to open up Tweetdeck where they can handle everything.

Is it six of one, half dozen of the other? Do you tackle each advertiser individually,  gauge their needs and guide them accordingly? Do you set up a system of ‘This is how you’re going to do it’ to save time?

These are the questions flying around my head right now. Any input in the comments would be greatly appreciated

We said we would only turn them on for certain stories. Our biggest fear this whole time has been whether yours truly will be able to manage the moderating duties along with my other duties. I often pictured myself buried under an avalanche of PENDING COMMENT emails and did everything I could to push for the use of excellent self-moderating systems like IntenseDebate or Disqus. Instead, we use the quaint Town News commenting system and so far have not shut off commenting for any story – because we’re not really getting many. We actually get excited when we see the PENDING COMMENT email. But I think for right now, we’re going to just opt out of allowing commenting on certain stories when or if commenting picks up and just leave them open on everything at the moment.

Of the 13 comments we’ve received, 9 of them are in response to an editorial or letter to the editor – 3 of those from the same person. The other four are reactionary to local stories.

I find myself surprised. Did we turn it off for too long? Are we too strict? Are the readers put off by the rules? Are we just not writing stories that are comment-worthy? (I say ‘no’ to that one, we’ve definitely written stories that we thought would have oodles of comments.) Do people just not realize they can comment again? We do place the commenting on a separate tab within the story. Maybe that’s a roadblock. Have we done a poor job of promoting the fact that commenting is back? Maybe readers are just mad at us for taking it away in the first place.

We’ll continue to futz with the process and make adjustments as needed. Perhaps we’ll work on a small marketing plan to promote commenting. Perhaps the comments will pick back up and I’m just being impatient. I guess months of fear-mongering over them made me expect too much right out of the gate.

As many might know, the founder of Twitter, Evan Williams, is from Clarks, Nebraska – population: 361 give or take.

I’ve been a sort of casual “fan” of Evan’s since I began using Blogger when it was still a part of Pyra Labs and I learned the founder was from Nebby. I say “fan” with quotes because I didn’t, you know, follow his every business move, but I loved Blogger and I love Twitter and I think it’s neat that Evan’s involved in both and I think it’s even neater that he’s from Nebraska (in fact, it’s one of the ‘hooks’ I use to try and interest my newsroom into using Twitter).

As I passed through Clarks, it really struck me that someone could come from this tiny tiny place and be innovative and successful. Oh sure, there are many well-known people who have come from small towns to make it big and I applaud them all, but Clarks is close to home. It sounds cheesy as hell, I know, but I had a little moment of inspiration driving through this small farm town.

Recently it seems more that I’m following a handful of famous people who interest me and it basically acts like another facebook status news feed, except for people who are too famous to be my friends on FB. I’m quite happy to accept that I’m doing it wrong, but I don’t really know how to do it right.

So, I thought I’d write about how I use Twitter – personally. I’ve talked about it benefits my newspaper, and I’ve gone on and on about how it can be a marvelous tool for any business. But I guess I haven’t really talked about how it can be used for fun as well.

Bear in mind, not everyone’s going to use it the way I do. Not everyone’s going to ever see any benefit to Twitter. Twitter is what you make of it. That’s my mantra. Twitter is what you make of it. But here are some ideas of how to make something fun and/or beneficial for anyone.

First, I have a lot of Twitter accounts. I mean, I have more than what is probably normal:

• @UKMelia – My Twitter account that is all for me to do with and mold how I please. I follow only those who interest me (several celebs, fan accounts from books/movies/shows I like etc.), family, and friends there, as well as people I work with on the Buffy/Angel Between the Lines audio dramas I participate in. The majority of my tweets here are also mostly to my boyfriend and my daughter. I don’t follow a ton of people here and I don’t have a big follower list either but this account is tailored exactly to what I like. I also keep this account locked because I am not interested in huge follower/following counts, and I can tweet what I like.
• @stephromanski – This is my professional account. I follow hundreds of smart, savvy journalists and news sources, some social media folk (I’m a bit choosy when it comes to that. I tend to prefer Social Media folk who work in my field, not the Marketing “Guru” folk because I’m not interested much in that.) I learn a lot from the people I follow here and it has been incredibly beneficial to me for sharing ideas, has expanded my interests and allowed me to network and meet others who enjoy the stuff I enjoy at work. The reason I keep separate personal/professional accounts is that this account is the one where no one gives a crap what I had for breakfast but on my UK account, my best friend might want the recipe for my awesome French Toast.
• @CherryPop and @LiamTheZombie – These are character accounts for a book I’m trying to write. I’m using Twitter to expand the ‘verse my characters inhabit. The project waxes and wanes, but I’m gearing up for NaNoWriMo with these guys so there will be more activity soon.
• @Doodurls – My pride and joy. My boyfriend and I created a website that solicits people Doodles, via Twitter mostly, and we run this account and the site together. These days, I think it’s almost essential that every venture like this  should have a Twitter account and facebook fan page associated with it to help grow the audience.
• And then I have about 7 or 8 accounts for the paper that I manage.

When Twitter was still in the early stages, the idea for it was to allow a quick way for the cell phone generation to send quick messages to friends and family to stay connected, to allow them to answer the ‘What are you doing?’ question knowing only family and friends would be interested in that. Some people have turned their personal feeds into something humourous. They’ll post one-liners, or @shitmydadsays, or quirky observations. Some tweet inspirational messages. Some will actually tweet every minute detail of their lives not caring who wants to read that sort of thing. And believe it or not, there are people on Twitter who aren’t after huge follower numbers.

I’ll give an example of how I came to grok Twitter. Year and years ago I used to be an admin on a telnet MUD called The Chatting Zone. The admin had their own special channel to talk on and basically it became a place to spit out random thoughts in our heads. Anything from, “Good lord who told Posh Spice she should be wearing THAT outfit??” (Hey, I said this was years ago) to, “Well I’m about to cook spaghetti for dinner.” Lots of times even the most mundane, random stuff would become conversation starters. When Twitter came along, I immediately thought how similar it was to my old TCZ admin days and I discovered I kind of missed the random ramblings of my fellow admin.

It might be hard to not view Twitter as a stripped down version of the Facebook status updates. And for my commenter, Twitter might not ever be useful for him personally. I think, for personal accounts, it’s too subjective to say Twitter is superior to Facebook or vice versa. Twitter is what you make of it. Tailor your account to follow who interests you, throw in some friends and family, use trends and searches to jump into conversations that matter to you and you’ll meet more people.

And who knows, maybe you’ll care about what some of them had for breakfast.

I swear, if I see that line in one more article about the positives and/or negatives of Twitter, I will scream. It’s a classic example of what makes Twitter so hard to “sell” in my newsroom and my small community.

I attended a meeting recently with several community businessmen and women where I was there to give a ‘Twitter 101′ talk. The first thing they said when I finished touting the real-time benefits, powerful search bonus and the variety of ways it could benefit small businesses, was the oft-quoted cliché above. They couldn’t get beyond it and it almost makes me angry.

Here I am trying to convince my coworkers and folks in the community that Twitter is a good thing, that it will help them in so many unexpected ways. But the only thing many of them come back with is the fact that they believe it is useless and frivolous. No, useless and frivolous is playing Mafia Wars on Facebook on company time. To be fair, several of the journalists in my newsroom have come around and are doing fantastically well with Twitter. But some… aren’t (also, none of them are playing Mafia Wars on company time ).

If you’re a journalist, you can learn a metric ton of information from the hundreds of other journalists using the service. You can crowdsource on a breaking story and provide complete coverage quickly. You can enjoy the benefits of having your community guide you to new stories, resources, tips and ideas.

If you’re a businessperson, the benefits to be explored for you are plentiful. You can find out what your customers are saying about you. You can direct specials and ads at them without the blowback you might get from shoving a banner ad in their face because they *choose* to follow you and see what you have to say. You can publicize events quickly – so many good things.

Have pity on those of us in the trenches trying to get people on board with this new direction. I think we can all agree Twitter isn’t really about what you had for breakfast anymore. Twitter is what you make of it. So can we stop using that tired old cliché now? Pretty please?

Not only are things going pretty well with our Twitter accounts, and fan page and all of that basic stuff, but we’ve got our first Beat Blogger, and we’re about to enter the realm of monetizing this Social Media stuff.

We may try out slipping an ad into our twitter stream like the awesome Austin Statesman has done. I rather like this unobtrusive tweet done two or three times per day that actually offers something of value to the local area.

We’re also going to begin offering interested advertisers the option to have our in-house Social Media person (me) manage their online presence – for a price.

When I was thinking about ways to bring services like Twitter and Facebook to our advertisers, my first thought was to show them how to use it. Well that’s just stupid. There aren’t many local businesses here that have the time or inclination to jump into the social media fray.

But some of them know they should and that’s where we’ll come in.

We’re hard at work trying to define this potential revenue source and figure out the best ways to approach it. I’ll write more about it once we put move forward, but I’m so excited about it that I wanted to mention it.

In other news, later this month I’ll be part of a Social Media panel for Nebraska Travel & Tourism’s annual conference. It’s the first time I’ve done something like this and I’m nervous as hell, but thrilled to be a participant.