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November 12, 2009
How I discovered twitter
Earlier this week I sat down with Film News Briefs for an interview. Below is an excerpt from the interview:
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Film News Briefs (FNB) Innovators: Jeff Pulver
FNB: How did you discover Twitter?
JP: I cheated a little bit. A friend was using twitter, at CES [Consumer Electronic Show] 2007.
FNB: So the service was still relatively new?
JP: I think it came out in June ‘06. I was with my friend Chris [Brogan], and we were in CES and at the same time Mac world was going on. And I couldn’t figure out how he knew where all his friends were and what was going on at Mac World. We were considering flying to San Francisco for it and ultimately didn’t. When I got back I got my account going and started to connect to people. I realized that this was slowly becoming a new way to communicate with folks. It’s different than what I had thought.
FNB: Really, How so?
JP: I spent thirty some-odd years as a Ham radio operator and I’m someone when I was nine years old went into my uncle’s office and I noticed that he talked to a radio and all of a sudden people started talking to him. I was so obsessed with that it took me till I was twelve and a half to get my ham radio license and I used that as my social media. Where I was social, where I grew up, where I connected to people where I discovered humanity for the first time. It was pretty amazing and my foundation of voice which is really just an extension of communication. Twitter is really an extension of that. Anyone that used instant messaging is used to sharing ideas, and Twitter isn’t new, but it was so simply modified and adopted and the creators of Twitter changed the platform as the consumers used it so @ replies didn’t originally exist. There were many things in the language that didn’t exist when it was first introduced.
FNB: How do you feel Twitter has changed community?
JP: Right now the thing that has happened with Twitter — believe me, no one from San Francisco went to Iran and recommended this to the dissidents and suggested using Twitter to tweet the Iranian election. No one went to Hollywood and said if you’re a celebrity, use twitter to delineate the studios cause we can give you direct branding. But it’s happening. The governments of the US, Israel and the UK use Twitter for public diplomacy. In the United States, there are over 260 police municipalities that tweet for public safety. People in public health use it. I’ve found educators using it. Rather than blocking it, they are using it to teach. It’s a global phenomenon that represents the beginning of the real time internet. For the first time in a very long time, people have a voice and it can matter.
FNB: How is Twitter affecting Hollywood?
JP: It scares the crap out of the Hollywood guys. You should see what they are trying to do to upcoming actors and actresses. They are putting in no tweet clauses.
FNB: Even for big stars, we heard they put a no-tweet clause for Mike Myers and Cameron Diaz for an upcoming movie.
JP: Really? What this represents is a classic form of disruption. Disruption is one of my favorite words. I used it to help redefine the telecommunication industry and its redefining Hollywood. I’m not saying to use twitter to break NDA’s and there are certain shows that you don’t want to reveal the plot but you can tease a little bit. To officially say thou shall not tweet is ridiculous.
To read more of this interview, please visit: http://filmnewsbriefs.com/2009/11/fnb-innovators-jeff-pulver/
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Tags: 140conf, social media, 140 Characters Conference, twitter, Jeff Keni Pulver
Posted by jeff on November 12, 2009 10:46 PM | Permalink
Additional resources: #140conf events | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos