Can I Catch Happiness from my Twitter Community?

A year ago, Clive Thompson wrote a provocative article in today's NY Times Magazine, Brave New World of Digital Intimacy on the social realities of Twitter and Facebook. This was the article that introduced the term, Ambient Awareness. You may recall how he described the myriad relationships of loose ties that are now possible with the platforms and how we deal with incessant online contact.

Well, Thompson has done it again, a fascinating piece in today’s NY Times Magazine, Is Happiness Catching. The article describes an innovative study by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. Some key points in the article:

If you want to be happy, what’s most important is to have lots of friends. The happiest people in Framingham were those who had the most connections, even if the relationships weren’t necessarily deep ones.

The reason these people were the happiest, is that happiness doesn’t come only from having deep, heart to heart talks. It comes from having daily exposure to many small moments of contagious happiness, When you see others smile, your spirits are repeatedly affected by mirroring their emotional state.

Interesting parallels with Ambient Awareness, don’t you think? If social platforms like Twitter and Facebook enable us to have friendships far in excess of theoretical Dunbar numbers, then wouldn’t those loose tie relationships affect our happiness?

Christakos and Fowler have even determined that each additional happy friend boosts good cheer by 9% and unhappy friends bring someone down by 7%. Uh oh, is this the next generation of the dreaded Twittergrader?

Seriously, it is a fantastic study that looks at the benefits of community on serious health issues like smoking and obesity. Jonah Lehrer has also written about the article in Wired, The Buddy System: How Medical Data Revealed Secret to Health and Happiness. There are some fascinating charts which demonstrate the community effects.

So what do you think? Can your social networks affect your health and happiness?

New Twitter Communities

As we all know, the Twitterverse is a great community where we can enhance our networking, strengthen relationships and crowdsource various questions/ problems among other things.  Recently, I've joined a few off-Twitter communities devoted to the Twitter network.

Twitterpated is a Ning community organized by A+ Networker, Vincent Wright,  whose goal is a separate discussion and networking group for My Linking Power Forum members who want to enhance their knowledge and reach on Twitter.com. Currently, there are 107 members.

The Birdhouse is another Ning community.  This one is organized by Tweetcrunch, a blog devoted to Twitter and Microblogging news. The Birdhouse is a place for developers and users who share the love of Micro blogging in any shape or form, from Twitter to Rejaw create groups, share new apps, ideas or suggestions, and get to know the people behind the tweet.  Brand new, there are currently15 members.

More established Twitter communities include Tweeple, a LinkedIn group devoted to Twitter.  Currently,  there are1600 members and 27 lively discussions posted.

On Facebook, Mark Carter created Twitter Strategies and Connections, For people actively using Twitter and people actively wondering HOW to use Twitter...Your forum to connect with like minded people so you can ask questions and share expertise and strategies (this includes everyone from new users to the "Twitter pros") that will make your Twitter experience more valuable! There are 697 members with some lively discussions, videos, and wall comments.

I enjoy participating in each of these communities as well as other social media communities.  A lot of interesting tips,tools and discussions that don't occur in 140 characters.  The net-net is a stronger community, whether on Twitter or not.  Hope to see you around.

Twitter Magic

Tonight while playing around on Twitter, I noticed an interesting tweet from Guy Kawasaki:

 

I didn't pay much attention honestly.  I thought maybe Guy had a heavy fetish or it was related to the lovely hat and boa set he is now wearing in his Twitter avatar. 11 minutes and 25 answers to Guy's question later, I saw this tweet from Guy:

 

Obviously, this is great Word of Mouth Marketing for Oriental Trading.  But even better, I know the Oriental VP of Marketing,  Neal Patrick. Unfortunately, Neal doesn't use Twitter nor does his company.  However, I have a feeling that will change soon.  So I connected Guy with Neal on Facebook and sent Guy Neal's email address.  Hopefully, they can help each other out.  More importantly, we saw the magic of the Twitter community with our loosely joined networks.

Now Guy, I do know a great little blog about Twitter that would be an awesome addition to Alltop! What do you think?

Twitter put to good use

Michelle Greer organized a tweetup blood drive in Austin today. You can read more about it below from Michelle's blog or check out the community responses. Tweetups are fun get together's for the twitter community to meet face to face, but this one really resonates as it allows us to do something good for others. This really demonstrates the strength of the twitter community.

clipped from www.michellesblog.net Come to the Blood Drive Tweetup. I Promise You My Support 100% 38 people are responsible for saving my sister Deb’s life. She underwent 23 blood transfusions and 15 bags of platelets in her fight against leukemia before she finally got over it. I owe a world to these people for helping save my sister’s life so that she could live to raise my eight-year-old niece. If you go to the Blood Drive Tweetup, I guarantee you my support. I guarantee I will be by you if you are scared or not feeling well. I do this because I value the 38 people who saved my sister’s life and the countless others who selflessly value the people in desperate, life and death situations. The right thing to do is often scary, but it is also the most fulfilling.

Going, going, gone

The twitter community is full of very creative people. Jennifer Leggio is one such person. Jennifer or @Mediaphyter as we know her, is very focused on helping out a great cause, Team in Training, the fundraising arm of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, which funds medical research for blood cancer cures and provides patient and family support programs. Rather than a bake sale or car wash, she came up with the great idea to auction off some of the top names in social media (and twitter). As Jennifer describes it, you can buy yourself a social media guru. Five top social media consultants will offer their time to the highest bidder on ebay. So who are these charitable leaders?

• Aaron Strout, VP of social media at Mzinga, and his blog
  
• Chris Brogan, VP of strategy and technology at CrossTechMedia and his blog
  
• Joseph Jaffe, president and chief interrupter at crayon and his blog
  
• Geoff Livingston, CEO of Livingston Communications and his blog
• Greg Verdino, chief strategy officer at crayon and his blog
  

The auctions expire on June 6th, so you still have time to put in a bid. Hopefully, we will deviate from standard ebay bidding behavior and not wait until the last minute to submit our bid. Remember, it is for a charity. The twitter and social media community has come out strongly in verbal support with many tweets, diggs, and blog posts. Perhaps all of the dialog is occurring in the social media fishbowl. Let's find a way to reach out to those outside of it, and make some big bids. It's for a worthy cause.

Red Sox nation

I am a big sports fan, that's why my twitter background is a baseball glove chair. I've even been known to blog a bit about it. Twitter has been great at connecting sports fans into a big happy family. Living on the west coast, I don't have many opportunities to watch the Red Sox on TV, but Twitter brings the action to me. Each game, RedSoxcast broadcasts the play by play. And using hashtags, Red Sox nation keeps up using Twemes. Many of Boston's biggest fans like Aaron Strout, Doug Haslam, Bryan Person, Jim Storer, Adam Cohen and Kyle Flaherty chat away as if they were at the Cask and Flagon. Of course, a final wrap up from the Boston Globe completes the coverage.

Of course, there are other fans that are active on twitter like the Mets and Red Wings. Wouldn't you expect that from a strong community? What team do you follow on twitter?