Tweeting the future

Before taking up the topic of social media in Darien late last month, Peter Shankman “tweeted” his world an inane few lines of text.

“”˜One of the things I love about Twitter is that you can totally make up quotations.”™ ”“ Abraham Lincoln,” Shankman wrote.

A day later, that one was still making the rounds on Twitter, having been “retweeted” more than 300 times since Shankman fired it off ”“ and making his point to some 100 businesspeople at a gathering of the CEO Roundtable networking group.

Shankman is in position to talk from on high ”“ he has some 57,000 followers on the service, thanks in part to interest in his New York City-based Help A Reporter Out service that connects journalists with expert sources.

At the event, Shankman asked his audience of some 100 business leaders how many used Twitter, counting about 20 raised hands. When he asked how many were “tweeting” about his talk at that moment, one hand was left up in the air.

That earned the remaining 99 or so a good-natured rebuke about how they were missing an opportunity at that moment to “enhance” their brand by getting heard on Twitter.

Those who are not on Twitter, Facebook or other social media outlets generally fall into three categories ”“ either they find the array of options and technologies bewildering; they fear it as a never-ending drain on their time; or they just do not care enough about it to incorporate it into their lives.

Shankman has a ready answer for all three ”“ when it comes to technologies, he reminds, it doesn”™t really matter if Twitter becomes tomorrow”™s Pets.com, the famous dot-com that fizzled as fast as it started.

“Embrace the concept, not the brand,” Shankman said.

As for the time-sucking sink that social media technologies represent for some, on one hand, he notes that one can control the degree to which one participates. For example, Shankman said he primarily gets his news from three podcasts he downloads first thing in the morning for his jog. That”™s about it for him.

Still, in a recent survey the Nielsen Co. found that people devoted more than five-and-a-half hours weekly to social networking activities like Facebook and Twitter, compared with about three hours in December 2008. That was more time than the average time spent playing video games or sending text messages.

Twitter.com remained the fastest-growing social site as of December 2009, with a nearly sevenfold increase in unique visitors to 18.1 million total.