Kevin over at Real Lawyers Have Blogs has a piece about a couple of law firms on Twitter. Looks like he’s found some firms actively using Twitter. This is unlike the result of my research of the AmLaw 100 on Twitter. I’m looking forward to seeing what Kevin finds out about the The state of the AmLaw 200 Twittersphere.
LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms
The short answer is no. Based on my research, only two firms appear — and I use that term loosely — to have Twitter accounts. Skadden appears to have an account, but there have been no updates. And it is difficult, if not impossible, to tell if this is an official, firm-sanctioned account. The same goes for Orrick, which also appears to have a Twit
ter account. But based on the content of the six updates, which in my opinion are quite strange and non-lawyer-like, I think that it is safe to say that someone has registered that Twitter account name without the permission of the firm.
It is clear, however, that people talk about some of the AmLaw 100 firms on Twitter. Here’s a sample search of some of the names on that list. Some of those tweets are from “real” news sources, like the ABA Journal, the UK’s Times Online, and Fox News. Others are from regular Twitters.
So, will law firms start to use Twitter? Should they? Discuss.
LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms
Twitter is all the rage. But apart from your friends and family, why does the world care if you are going on vacation or that you are bored or that you are impressed with Michael Phelps’ performance at the Olympics? Truth is: the world doesn’t care, but for some reason, people like to read about this stuff. Maybe that’s reason enough to join Twitter.
However, Twitter is more than that. Real people make real connections and exchange ideas. Most of the time
those people have something in common that causes them to connect with their Twitter friends. LawyerKM doesn’t know all of the people he follows on Twitter (and not all of those who follow him know him). But they all share an interest in legal knowledge management. So, there’s that.
But from a KM perspective, Twitter is a knowledge base and expertise resource. Because it’s open, you can search Twitter for all types of useful information, opinions, advice, etc. A Twitter search engine by Summize (recently purchased by Twitter) is one way to find what you’re looking for. Check out http://search.twitter.com/. There is a pretty good advanced search page, so you can drill down to just what you want.
Want to see what people are saying about Legal OnRamp? Check Twitter.
How about Facebook or Social Networking in general? Or Enterprise 2.0? Check Twitter.
Want to see what people are saying about Westlaw and Lexis? Check Twitter.
Westlaw even has a Twitter account that you can follow, if you like. So does Recommind. And no fewer than 80 people have “knowledge management” in their Twitter profiles.
After you search Twitter and find out what people are saying, you might identify some “experts” related to that topic. You can contact them directly by starting your tweet with “@twittername” (e.g., @LawyerKM). Or you can send a private message via the “message” link on a users profile (see the image on the right).
I recently was looking for opinions about external batteries for my iPhone. I already searched the web and Amazon.com, but I wanted another perspective. So I checked Twitter. As you can imagine, a lot of people had a lot to say about it. (By the way, you can follow Apple, Inc. on Twitter, too).
As an added bonus, if you have a Twitter Google Gadget (such as Be Twittered), on your iGoogle page, like I do, you can catch a glimpse of recent tweets without signing in at Twitter.com. This is especially handy if you follow some of the popular “breaking news” services like BreakingNewsOn and MSNBC and the dozens of others. These services often break news on Twitter long before other websites get the word out.
Finally, for up to the minute happenings on the campaign trail, you can follow Obama (he has the most Twitter followers – 58,345), but I couldn’t find McCain. TechCrunch couldn’t find him either.
LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms
[update] – this looks like a Twitter accident.
They say that you can never be too popular. Twitter disagrees. Prolific Tweeter, Connie Crosby, of Connie Crosby Blog, Slaw and Crosby Group Consulting fame has apparently been bounced from (but maybe now reinstated to) Twitter. You can see some other people tweeting about it on Twitter.
We’re not sure what’s going on here, but some think, that she had too many Twitter followers. Another Tweeter, reports that Connie “still has the account but the content is gone except for 1 tweet and 2 followers!”
Keep upto date on this — where else — on Twitter.
@conniecrosby – hope to see you Tweeting again soon.
LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms
Tweet 2 Tweet solves the problem of Facebook Wall withdrawal. As the SheGeeks* blog points out, if you like Twitter, but miss the “Wall-to-Wall functionality on Facebook…. This feature allows users to see only messages between [two] people. There has been no easy way to access the same functionality on Twitter nor through any of the plethora of third party Twitter conversation trackers, until now.”
*Thanks to Robert Scoble
LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms
After only four days without Internet access, I am considering declaring RSS Bankruptcy. There are just too many RSS feed items in my Google Reader account, and I can’t keep up.
By now, most people have heard of e-mail bankruptcy: the act of starting over by deleting most (if not all) of the e-mail messages in your in-box and requesting that people resend messages if they are really important. It’s becoming pretty popular. Maybe the next version of Microsoft Outlook should have an e-mail bankruptcy button. Here’s an article about how venture capitalist Fred Wilson declared e-mail bankruptcy last month. His message was, “I am so far behind on e-mail that I am declaring bankruptcy,” he wrote. “If you’ve sent me an e-mail (and you aren’t my wife, partner, or colleague), you might want to send it again. I am starting over.”
I sympathize with Wilson. I know that I’ll spend most of the day playing the “e-mail catch-up game” when I return to the office after vacation. It’s stressful. But I feel an almost equivalent level of stress when I see that I have several thousand unread RSS items in my Google Reader account. There are close to a thousand items in my KM folder alone. Part of me wants to at least skim the items, but the other part wants to simply pretend they never existed. This is nothing new, really. I wrote about it last year in RSS Overload is the New Black. So, I should have seen it coming.
For now, I’m not ready for RSS bankruptcy. I’m just going to allow the items to accumulate, read some at my leisure, and really do nothing. (I know, it’s all very Zen.) If I miss something, it’s OK. I’m sure someone will re-blog it and I’ll see it eventually. Or maybe I’ll see it on Twitter, or maybe in my FriendFeed wrap-up email. Or maybe I should follow Tim Ferriss’ lead and outsource my RSS reading, the way he outsources his e-mail. Or maybe… it just doesn’t matter.
How do you deal with RSS overload?
Update: One thing that will help is Google’s new Google Reader application for the iPhone, which is still in beta. Read about it on Lifehacker. The previous version was pretty good, but it was clearly a “light” version of the full web-based RSS reader. The new version more accurately resembles the full version. Very handy.
LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms
