Freedivers on Twitter

[Jorg]

I'm already using twitter since around 2 years to keep in contact with colleagues, friends and family. Now that even Oprah is using the service to keep in touch, I thought there would also be a lot of freedivers out there who are using twitter to tell about their latest training results or other freediving related stuff.

Anyway, if you've got a twitter account, put it in this thread.

My personal account: @jorgjansen

My Shark Freediving account where you will find all the latest freediving news: @sharkfreediving
If you have anything interesting to say, like national competition updates, local record attempts, news, etc, just tweet this one!

Our Team Sharkbait account where you will find all our latest training, competition, review stories: @sharkbaitnews

 

[fcallagy]

Jorg I have an account but have not tweeted much yet. The only followers I was getting were peolpe I didn't know from far far away and had no real interets in me or my business i think therefore I didn't accept them. How are you finding it and another question if I may are you using any particular tool to update all social media accounts at once? I find myself posting a lot on several different accounts and taking up a lot of time. My main problem is i may need to post on one site about stoves so has no relation to diving or surfing and vice versa.
Be interested to hear other opinions on twitter too.

https://twitter.com/fcallagy

 

[Jorg]

Good questions about the use of twitter. I had the same ones when I first started 2 years ago with using it.

I use a lot of different social media tools for my personal life, business life and freediving life. That is in short the way I divided my 'roles' in the internet. With that in mind, I manage 7 different twitter accounts, facebook profiles, youtube accounts and many more.

The tool that I'm using now is excellent if you use facebook and/or twitter. It's called Seesmic Desktop. you install it on your pc and you can add your facebook account and multiple different twitter accounts. Furthermore, you can search, make groups of people and do many other things.

Most of my followers I also don't know. But if they find it interesting of following me, I'm proud that they do. But for the people I know, I put them in groups in seesmic. This way I can follow them back. So I have groups called freedivers, business relations, friends, family, etc.

Anyway, I can go on and on, but hopefully you get the picture. If you have anymore questions about this, you're welcome to ask of course.

 

[trux]

I just created an account for APNEA.cz - and will try sending some news there by SMS when I am not online.

I also added search based on Freediving @ Twitter to the global news feed on my website, so freediving related news posted to Twitter appear there now too.

 

[samdive]

we're on

Saltfree Divers (saltfree) on Twitter

 

[trux]

OK, I added some more Twitter support at APNEA.cz. Besides including freediving related messages from Twitter to the RSS News Feed, I now enabled users to enter their Twitter handle in the APNEA.cz User Profile. Twitter messages are then visible on the user's public profile page. You can see an example on my own profile here:

APNEA.cz - User Profile

And if you want to check who from APNEA.cz users has a Twitter account, you can list them all here: http://apnea.cz/usermap.html?usrMapMode=LIST&usrMapType=twitter Of course, right now, I am the only one, because I just enabled this new feature a few minutes ago.

Do not hesitate logging into your APNEA.cz profile, and entering your Twitter handle, if you have one.

I'll add another Twitter function for APNEA.cz teams, so the messages of all team members are grouped together and displayed on the same place. It will allow updating from multiple users and/or phones - that function is currently not available directly in Twitter, but may be interesting for clubs or groups of freedivers who want to share quick info with other team members, including those without any Twitter account.

 

[Jorg]

Added my handle into my profile on apnea.cz! nice work.

 

[trux]

I was sure you'd be the first

 

[WillUnderwater]

I'm on there! Follow me for latest updates!

(WillUnderwater) on Twitter

 

[BennyB]

Please.... i'm struggling to keep up with Facebook let alone Twitter!

 

[Jorg]

Please.... i'm struggling to keep up with Facebook let alone Twitter!

Don't struggle, just let it come to you... Use a good facebook/twitter client! I barely visit the facebook website, I just watch the stream come to me...

 

[ILDiver]

Chris Neal (freediver_72) on Twitter
Not a lot of interesting news out of me or anything though

 

[trux]

Personally I did not use Twitter a lot till now, but find its main advantage in the possibility of updating the messages by a simple SMS from a mobile phone. This makes it a great tool for example for publishing competition results, training alerts, or similar flash news.

Just now, I added another Twitter related feature to APNEA.cz. Not only it displays the last twitter messages on your profile page, which may allow your friends following your news, even if they do not use Twitter themselves. I now added Twitter support to APNEA.cz teams too.

In fact people are not really aware of the team feature at APNEA.cz - regular members can found a "team", and others can then join it. They have then automatically their own website with the URL in form of APNEA.cz - Freediving and Apnea Resources with own blog, private and public forum, member map, photo & video gallery, calendar and training planner (still in works), and more.

Now, in the team settings accessible to the team founder at APNEA.cz - Teams, the team founder or admin can assign a twitter handle. Once assigned, Twitter messages for that account will appear on the home page of the team website. You can have a look on the website of the team Cyrnéa (which is currently the only really functional team): Cyrnéa - L'apnée à Lyon (yes, it has own domain and slightly modified layout, but it is still based on the same team feature of APNEA.cz). The messages are in the right column, below the user photos.

There are also some other teams, for example Sharkbait @ APNEA.cz, aGua @ APNEA.cz, or Pejin @ APNEA.cz, but there are practically unused - they have only a single member (the founder) each, and no content in the blog, forum, gallery, or twitter.

The big advantage of this Twitter feature for APNEA.cz teams is that unlike the classical Twitter messaging, it supports updates from multiple phones (and other sources of course too). Unlike at the Twitter web, on the APNEA.cz team home page, they are displayed not only messages of the owner of the Twitter account, but also messages sent to it by anyone else. It means all members can send some flash updates from their phones (or from the PC's too) to the main page. All they need to do is prefixing their Twitter message with @teamAlias and it will appear on the home page at the next reload.

I plan sending updates about the competition in Prague next week in this way - instead of calling or sending SMS to all who are interested, I'll simply type a short SMS to the twitter number, and the flash update will be published for all.

 

[Jorg]

Wow, great stuff! People are probably not aware about the great things you're doing with your website. Probably the most underrated freediving website with the biggest possibilities!
Great work.

 

[kelp princess]

nice work trux - i have a very specific use for my twitter account - i don't do updates or say clever things :t but what i do find it useful for is getting up to the minute weather/water conditions reports from my fellow divers in my local area.

if the water is like glass and somebody is there, i get an update.

and i also like to hear what PapaSmurf is up to rofl other than that i'm pretty much an observer.

free_dive



cheers,

kp

 

[WillUnderwater]

Don't struggle, just let it come to you... Use a good facebook/twitter client! I barely visit the facebook website, I just watch the stream come to me...

Could you elaborate on this? I'm on mac if it matters

 

[trux]

I added Twitter messages to the APNEA.cz main page now too. So if you have any news worth of publishing on the main page, you can simply send a message to the Twitter ID APNEA_cz (prefixing the message with @APNEA_cz) and it will be displayed there instantly (right column, below the user photos). Well, page reload is needed to see the status changed. Also please note that Twitter, at some newer accounts, filters out your own messages from search results, so although they will be visible for others, it can happen that you do not see them at APNEA.cz - in such case do not resend the message, but rather look at the page from another PC, or use an alternative browser. I struggled with it too, before finding it was a known bug at Twitter.

And, of course, spamming or abusing the system won't be tolerated - there are some means to cope with such cases both on the Twitter side as well as at APNEA.cz.

 

[Jorg]

Could you elaborate on this? I'm on mac if it matters

You can use a special desktop client to watch your twitter or facebook stream. you can filter, search, comment to both services from this local installed client. My favorite is Seesmic Desktop, but another good one is Tweetdeck.

Both applications use adobe air, so they work on windows, mac and linux.

 

[samdive]

I'm thinking of tweeting the results of Double Dip live as they happen on the Saltfree Twitter account - what do you think? Would people be interested?

 

[Jorg]

I would certainly be! This way I can live blog about it on my site.