Sean R. Nicholson

Continuing with my posts on great Twitter resources, this is a followup to my 99 Great Internal Comms Resources,  99 Great Intranet Resources and 99 Great ECM Resources posts. Below is a link to my list of 99+ great SharePoint Resources on Twitter. If you’re looking for the folks who tweet about SharePoint as an Intranet platform, ECM solution, and a collaboration tool…these are your folks! Pay careful attention and you may see folks who are also providing links to some valuable SharePoint alternatives, as well.

Sean’s list of 99+ Great SharePoint resources on Twitter

Know someone that I missed from the list? Definitely let me know. Shameless self-promotion is also allowed if you think you should be included, just make sure your tweets back up your request.

You can check out the list below, and feel free to leave a comment if there’s anyone else I should add.

Sean R. Nicholson

Warning: This is a long blog post detailing my adventures through blocked blogs and suspended Twitter accounts. If you’re looking for a short read or have a really short attention span, you’d be better off checking out my Tweets or skipping to the end of this post where there are some key lessons learned from this experience.

If you have a few minutes and are looking for the “juicy details” (you’ll learn what that means later), grab a cup of coffee, get comfy, and read on

Blogs, Tweets, Hackers, Oh My!

Okay, it’s official. I am not a social media addict. Well, not a certifiable one, anyway. As of yesterday, I successfully survived 12 days of withdrawal from my main sources of social media and came out on the other side alive. Okay…so I cheated a little bit using Facebook and LinkedIn, but shhhh….don’t tell anyone.

I’d love to report that my 12 day hiatus was the result of some exotic retreat to an off-the-grid island paradise, but unfortunately, I was forced into seclusion from my blog and Twitter by the nefarious forces at work on the Internet…probably some 14 year-old kid with entirely too much time on their hands.

Banned From Twitter – Uh Oh!!

So it was Friday morning and I had just finished up a conversation with a fellow employee about an internal microblog (similar to Twitter) that we are running at work. He had some questions about TweetDeck, so I offered to show him how I had TweetDeck configured. As we started to go through my configuration, I noticed a tweet from @carolyndouglas indicating that my account had been suspended (thanks Carolyn!).

One of my followers alerted me to the problem. Thanks Carolyn!

Huh?? How could that be? I headed on over to the native Twitter Web site and lo and behold, there was the Twitter Foul Owl right on my home page indicating that everyone should mosey along from my profile. Ouch! What had I done? Who had I offended? I consider myself to be a model tweeter, offering constructive dialog, links to valuable content, and I try to keep my snarky comments to myself (albeit sometimes unsuccessfully).

The Dreaded Foul Owl - Who Goes There?

So what was this “strange activity” that the wise Foul Owl was referencing? My follow:follower ratio wasn’t unbalanced, I wasn’t spamming anyone, and I wasn’t pitching Viagara or Xanax to my followers, so what’s the deal? Why are my Document Management or Intranet-focused tweets being considered strange? I was downright befuddled.

My Response – A Kneejerk Reaction To Being Called “Strange”

Being told that your tweets are “strange” isn’t a good feeling and my initial reaction was one of frustration and irritation. Unfortunately, I was headed to back-to-back afternoon meetings, so I had to brew a bit over my Twitter suspension before I could seek resolution. I found that the longer my day drew on,  the more fixated I became on having my content called “strange”. Who’s to judge what is strange? Was I strange because I like to talk about technology, Intranets, and Enterprise Content Management? My wife seems to think so, but she never banned be from prattling on about the latest portal upgrade or cool new document workflow solutions. Instead, she just politely nods a lot and her eyes get a bit of a glazy look, but she always smiles and pretends to be interested…but I digress.

At the end of the day, I finally had some time to look into the issue. My first step was to click the Foul Owl link below the image that offered the “juicy details” to find out why I had been suspended. Unfortunately, Foul Owl didn’t provide any useful information and there were definitely NOT any juicy details as the wise bird promised. Instead, I was taken to a Google “Oops! page indicating that the juicy details I was seeking were not available.

The Twitter Foul Owl promised me juicy details, but dumped me to a Google Oops! page.

In the immortal words of Homer J. Simpson, “DOH!”.

How dare the Foul Owl promise me the details on why I was being blocked and then send me off to the land of unfound content. Talk about strange! Well, being that I was already worked up, I decided to go the next step and check out http://help.twitter.com to see if they could provide me with some relief and maybe a description of why I was “strange” and “suspended”.

Twitter Help Wasn’t Much Help In Understanding Why I Had Been Suspended

Unfortunately, the Twitter help site was less than helpful. I was already frustrated and the Google Oops! page didn’t help, but at least the Twitter help site looked like a wealth of information. However, instead of getting any useful information about suspended accounts, I got a lot of “how to” content on Finding People on Twitter and information on the Twitter text commands. After searching and searching for a way to open a support ticket with Twitter, I finally found a tiny link buried in the middle of a TON of content.

Twitter buries the link to create a support ticket.

Now I don’t mean to complain, but when someone is looking for help, burying the link that offers that help in the middle of the page amongst a ton of content doesn’t seem to be the best user experience. Maybe this is Twitter’s strategy since it forces  folks to read through the how to find people and text commands, but my guess is that Twitter support isn’t being flooded with requests for help on finding Uncle Joe or Aunt Sally or even “how do I use the official Twitter text commands??” so I’m not sure about their strategy in burying the support link. Maybe they figure that if they bury the link amongst useless information, it is less likely to be found.

Tip #1: If your account has been suspended by Twitter and you feel the suspension is unfair, go to http://help.twitter.com and scroll down the page half way to find the link in the image above to open a ticket.

The Support Ticket Is Opened, But Still No Reason Why!

Having found the link, I went ahead and opened a support ticket. With my frustration level being pretty high, I think I did a pretty good job asking politely why I had been suspended and what I needed to do to reverse the decision. After all, I am a firm believer that ticking off your support engineer, garbage man, or waitress rarely has a good outcome.

Although the ticket was opened, I still didn’t know why I had been blocked, so I took a look at my most recent posts to see if I had offended someone.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to dig too deep to find the problem. My last tweet had been a response thanking a fellow Tweeter for a comment she made on the title of one of my blog posts

A seemingly benign tweet until I clicked the link to my blog site and was presented with the Google warning that visiting the site might harm my computer due to issues with the site. Double-DOH!!

Now what had I done? My Twitter account had been suspended, my blog was giving me a warning….ping. The lightbulb went on and I connected the two.  Since my blog was being blocked by Google and my tweets often contain links to my blog, Twitter must rely on Google warnings to identify people who are posting up links to spam or malware. Genius!! Well….Except for the part where they suspended me.

So My Blog Was Hacked And My Twitter Account Suspended

It appeared as though my weekend was about to be shot to bits. Now I had to figure out what was wrong with my blog and then figure out how to convince Twitter to un-suspend my account. Fortunately, having been in the Web business for some time, I know a few tools that helped me troubleshoot the issue quickly. First, I checked the most recent version of my blogging software. Unfortunately, I was one dot release behind, which could have exposed a weakness allowing someone to inject malware code into my site.

Next, I used a really nice tool at www.dasient.com which does a complete scan of your site to search for malware. It then tells you which pages are potentially infected. Since I had a couple of pages that were infected, I decided not to take and chances and restored my entire site from a backup to ensure clean pages and then upgraded to the latest dot release.

Tip #2: If Google, IE, or Firefox is indicating that your site is unsafe to visit, it’s a good idea to take the site offline so as not to infect any additional visitors and then run a check against your offline files (using a test server or subdirectory) at Dasient.com. Having an offline backup of all your files makes a site restore much easier.

After restoring the site and rerunning a Dasient check to ensure that no additional infection existed, I used Google WebMaster tools to request a review of my site to have the warning removed. After fixing the issue, it took less than 12 hours for Google to unblock the site.

So The Blog Is Fixed, Now To Just Get My Twitter Account Un-Suspended

Sounds easy enough, right? Blog fixed in under 24 hours, Twitter account should be a piece of cake. Unfortunately, no. To Twitters’ credit, they take malware seriously. Links are critical to the vitality of Twitter and if they didn’t take malware seriously, Twitter would quickly become a dumping ground for attackers looking to spread malicious links across the Web. So, I do have to give kudos to Twitter for taking this issue so seriously. According to the Twitter information on suspended accounts, it could be as long as 30 days before my account was cleared and I was able to tweet again. Triple DOH!!

Fortunately, it only took 12 days.

According to Twitter support, they address tickets in the order they are received, so I guess I just had to wait in line until a support tech got to my ticket. I checked in daily on my ticket, anxiously awaiting a response. Fortunately, once my ticket came up in the queue, the support rep was able to review my site, ensure that I was tweeting within their guidelines and was a good Twitter citizen, and restore my account quickly.

Five Lessons Learned From This Crazy Adventure

1. If you are using open source blogging software, it is imperative that you keep your blog software on the absolute latest release to ensure that any security holes are closed. Because the software is open source, hackers have access to the code and will exploit any security issue they can find. This means checking your site daily for new releases.
2. Twitter does not notify users when their accounts are suspended. If you’re lucky, you’ll find out from your followers. If you’re not lucky, you’ll find out when you go to post.
3. Fix any blog or site issues before you ask for your Twitter account to be reinstated. If your ticket comes up for review and your blog or site is still not clean, Twitter will not un-suspend your account. A great tool for assessing your blog or site is www.dasient.com
4. Open a Twitter ticket as soon as you have a clean bill of health for your site. It will probably take a while for Twitter to reinstate your account.
5. Vigilance is key. Pay attention to those Google and Firefox malware warnings. Don’t visit the site. Give the sitemaster time to fix the problem and check back later.

Okay, so those are the “juicy details” that Foul Owl promised, but never delivered. I hope that by sharing this adventure, I can help my fellow bloggers and tweeters navigate these waters in case your are faced with a similar situation. I’d be more than interested to hear similar experiences and will try to answer any questions you might have about the process in comment responses.

Happy (and safe) blogging and tweeting!

Sean R. Nicholson

Many Intranet professionals are already leveraging the power of Twitter to market their activities outside of the firewall, but few have taken the next step add microblogging as a feature to their organizational Intranet. Luckily, the great folks at the Laconica project are building an open source microblog application that can easily be installed in both Windows and Unix/Linux environments and rolled out in a matter of hours.

What Is The Laconica Project?

The Laconica Project consists of a group of volunteer development professionals committed to creating an open source microblogging application that allows users to share 140 character messages.  Basically, you can install the application on a Windows, Unix, or Linux server inside your firewall and ensure that the “tweets” (or whatever you choose to call them internally) are only visible to your organization.

How Can I Test Laconica To Make Sure It Will Work For My Organization?

If you’re interested in testing out Laconica without having to install it on one of your servers, just create an account at www.identi.ca. Identi.ca is the largest implementation of the Laconica and includes all of the functionality that you’ll see when implementing the application in your environment. Keep in mind that Identi.ca is open to the world, so anything your post there will be published to the Public timeline and is visible to the everyone.

Collaboration Is Key In Any Organization

What Added Benefits Can Microblogging Add To My Intranet?

The key benefit to implementing microblogging withing your organizations is collaboration. I am a firm believer that any tool that gets your organization “talking” and sharing information is a good thing. There are a variety of additional benefits, however, that can help you complete your microblogging strategy proposal:

One-To-Many Communications

One of the most common questions I heard when proposing internal microblogging was “How is this different from Messenger/Jabber/SameTime?”. These tools are primarily used for one-to-one communication where one user engages with another user to seeks answers to questions or discuss a topic. Some messenger clients allow for the creation of group discussions, but these tools are not primarily used for group conversations.

By allowing your users to share with the group as a whole, you facilitate “one-to-many” communication where the post can be shard with the everyone. This allows other users to then seek out the content by browsing or through searches.

Archiving Of Important Conversations

One of the unfortunate downsides to Messenger/Jabber/Sametime clients is that once the conversation is over and the dialog box is closed, the conversation disappears into cyberspace and is lost to the organization. If your organization uses one of these clients, think about how many questions are answered in one-to-one conversations each day that would be valuable to the organization if they were retained, indexed, and made searchable. That’s where microblogging beats messenger clients, hands-down.

With microblogging, all of the messages are stored in a database, made searchable and, if your organization leverages the hashtag functionality, the information can be categorized for easy retrieval. Hashtags are keywords preceded by the # sign, which allows microblogs to group posts by topic. So when discussing microblogging, any user that adds #microblog to their message will automatically categorize their message with others with the same hashtag.

Open Communication Beyond Email

In organizations where messenger clients aren’t present, the question about microblogging is usually “How is this different from email?”. Like messenger clients, email is a siloed communication vehicle that allows only those on the distribution to read the content. The only way that the information can be shared with the entire organization using email is by sending it to a distribution group that contains everyone. And we all know how much we love those types of emails. Organizations quickly become desensitized to content in mass-emails, so you risk losing the value of the information.

Microblogging allows users to seek out the information when they need it, instead of having it pushed to them in an email and stored in their their personal mail folders. As a result, users can easily get the most up-to-date information based on how the microblog conversations have progressed. Additionally, since the information is public to everyone in the organization, you break down the communication silos that exist within email.

Knowledge Management

Let the experts in your organization share their knowlege one tidbit at a time.

One of the difficulties that organizations constantly wrestle with is getting the information stored inside their employees heads into a format that can be stored, indexed, and searched. Microblogging does exactly that by allowing employees to share small tidbits of information with the organization at their convenience. They don’t have to devote vast amounts of time to writing “job aids” and how-to documents. Instead, a simple message like “Remember to put cover sheet version 2.2 on all of the new TPS reports. #tps” will provide users with a reminder that version 2.2 is the correct cover sheet. By adding #tps to the message, any user who searches for #tps will find the latest message in chronological order. This way, when another user posts a message stating “A new version of the TPS cover sheet should be used, version 2.3. #tps” all users will see the new post at the top of the timeline. Combine these posts with hyperlinks to the new version of the TPS report, and you have a great knowledge management combination.

Topical Filtering By Hashtags

Is I indicated previously, hashtags really bring out the power of a microblog. Any microblog training should include the use of hashtags so that users understand the value of categorizing their content. Not every post requires a hashtag, but the more your users use them, the easier it will be to location content.

Interest Organization Using Groups

Microblogs like Laconica also allow users to create groups. Groups allow like-minded individuals or those working on a common topic/project to share information among the group. By posting a message that says “!financianalyst To all the financial analysts, be sure to submit completed expense reports by 05/05/09.”, the user is sending a reminder to anyone in the financialanalyst group. While the message is still posted on the public timeline (viewable to the entire organization), any Financial Analyst can filter their messages to just those targeted at their group by visiting the timeline dedicated to their group.

How Do I Drive Adoption Of A Microblog?

Driving the adoption of microblogging is all about value. If your users see no value in participating, they won’t adopt the technology. The best way to drive value is to show it in action. Identify a group of Twitter users in your organization and ask them to participate in a pilot project. Spend 30 days posting to the microblog,  ensuring that you are using the hashtags and group functionality. More than likely, after 30 days of posting, you will be able to show some specific topics, groups, and posts that have driven value in your organization. By demonstrating the value, you’re likely to have a much easier time showing why microblogging is useful than just simply trying to explain what Twitter is and how it works.

Have thoughts or input? I’m always open to constructive feedback in the comments! I’d love to hear successes (and yes…even failures) of internal microblogging. Share those stories in your comments!