Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #358 - Twitter

Episode Date: August 19, 2016

Mark talks about how he uses Twitter and shares some stories.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. And yet again, taking my son to camp. It's summer. I mean, whenever I record these, I always record about six to eight weeks ahead of time. So I guess it's still summer, but it's early summer for me and later summer for you. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about Twitter. So I'm going to talk about Twitter. Twitter is something that I've been on for quite a while. In fact, of all my social media, I have the most followers on Twitter. I checked this morning, according to Twitter, I have about 55,700 followers as of today.

And that is my biggest following. I mean, I'm on a bunch of social media. I'm obviously on, besides Twitter, I'm on Tumblr. I'm on Instagram. I am on Google+. I do a bunch of different things. But I think of every social media platform that I'm on, Twitter is clearly the biggest. And Twitter is the one...

Well, I'm on Tumblr every day pretty much too, but Twitter is the one where every morning I wake up and I post a few things to Twitter. So I'm going to talk about sort of my involvement with Twitter, how I got involved on Twitter, what I think the weaknesses and strengths of Twitter are, and sort of talk about how I use it as a means to communicate with all of you. So anyway, that's today's topic is Twitter. Okay, so, real quickly, let me explain what Twitter is for some of you that might not know what Twitter is. I assume most of you know what Twitter is, but I like to explain things since everybody doesn't know. Okay, so Twitter is a social media built around the following premise, which is you can do what are called tweets, little mini posts,

and you have 140 characters to say what you want. That includes spaces. So the idea really is it was designed as being something that was very tight, and it requires you to sort of be very concise in your messaging, which ended up being a very, a big part of what makes Twitter so interesting. Now, part of Twitter has become not just are you writing things, but you're doing pictures and links and things. And as Twitter's evolved, I know they've slowly, like,

originally when you would post a picture, like, the number of spaces it took to register your picture counted against your 140. And recently, I think they stopped counting pictures against your Word account. And links might be not counted against your Word account anymore. But anyway, the thing about it was it is a way to interact with people in a nice, clean, concise way. And it also is very fast. The thing about Twitter is it's very in the moment.

Like, what I've learned is I learned breaking news from Twitter. That is where I learned if some celebrity dies or some event happens. Like, Twitter is where I learned breaking news from Twitter. That is where I learned if some celebrity dies or some event happens, like Twitter's where I learned about it because it is on Twitter instantaneously where any other media source usually just takes a little bit of time to trickle down. And so Twitter for me has become,

I like to figure out each of my social media, how I use it and what to do with it. So, for example, Tumblr is where I tend to answer questions. Tumblr is my blog. You know, the column is where I write long form sort of explaining why we're doing things and I talk about things. That's what my column is for. This podcast is, it lets me really dig in deep into issues to do, like, I get more content in a podcast than I do in any other form of what I do. So it allows me to really go in deep on a particular topic.

And so one of the things about Twitter was, it really allows me to be more instantaneous, to read the pulse of things, and to interact with people in a more direct, fast way. Now, do I answer questions on Twitter? Sometimes. I mean, one of the things about Twitter is I get to interact with people, and so sometimes people will ask me questions.

The limitations of Twitter, meaning I can't really go in depth, means that a lot of topics are hard for me to answer. Not that I won't try. I mean, one of the things that I do quite a bit sometimes is I'll get into discussions with people on Twitter, which, you know, and the thing about Twitter is, okay, those that don't understand, the way it works is I post things.

So I'm going to, I am at Maro254, which I'll get to in a second. So at, like the at sign, M-A-R-O-254. And the idea is I post things. So anybody who wants to follow me can see whatever I post. That is public. Whatever I post is public. It's not hidden.

There is messaging and things, and that's not public. But most of Twitter is I post something publicly, and anybody who chooses to follow me can follow me, and they can see it. Like I said, I have about 55,000 or so followers. What that means is there's 55,000 people that in their thread, the idea is you choose who you want to follow, and then in your feed, everybody you've chosen shows up. Now, there's all algorithms and things about what order they show up in and stuff. But the idea is my followers will see my tweets.

And so one of the things I always do, so in the morning I wake up and I always do a couple things. First off is I have my thing called Head to Head, which is a, it's a three-week voting thing. I did a podcast on this, obviously, where people, like right now,

if I record this, we're just ending up the format one to tell you the time frame. And the idea is I picked 16 formats that people currently play. I pit them against each other

for 15 days. It starts as a round of 16, goes to a quarterfinals, to a semifinals, to finals, and there's a winner. So I post that every weekday morning. Then also every weekday morning, I post my comic, which is Tales from the Pit,

which is a little comic I make using an app that allows me to take a picture, often magic art, but sometimes pictures of R&D people and stuff. And I can add word balloons or captions or whatever. And I have a little comic that I do every day. So in the morning, I always get up and I will post my head-to-head and I will post my Tales from the Pit, assuming it is a weekday. On Mondays, I normally will post a link to my column

because my column goes up on Mondays. And then on Fridays, I will post the links to my two podcasts. My podcasts go up on Mondays, but for my social media, for Twitter, Tumblr, and Google+, I post them the Friday ahead of time. So if you want to hear them as soon as you can hear them, my social media, I post them on Friday. They go up on the website,

I think, on Monday. Or at least my column links to them on Monday. I think they're technically on the website if you have a link. But to get the link, you need to get it

from my social media. So that's the stuff like I do on a regular basis. Those are the things that I always do. And then there's a lot of things that I do on occasion on Twitter.

Before I get to that, though, let me answer the question. One of the most common questions I get, I'm going to answer now, which is why at Maro254? Why is that my handle? Well, all of them are at, that's for sure. Maro is my nickname. For those that don't know that, I assume most of you do. M-A is for Mark, R-O is for Rosewater. It came from when I was filling the hole for, I was on the Mirage development team. I filled the hole, which is the card Morrow. Bill Rose, who was the leader of the team, wrote down, because it didn't have a name,

what he typed in to get me on the email system. Bill had figured out the shortest number of combinations of letters he could type to get anybody's name. To get me, he had to type MA, my first two first two letters, R-O, the last two letters. So he just wrote Maro on the card, through a creative team, thought that was the name, and thought it was, I mean, they knew it was a reference to me,

they thought it was funny, so they left it. So, anyway, that ended up becoming a nickname for me. So if you ever go online, people refer to me as Maro. 254 is, I tried to just do at Maro, clearly there was another at Maro. So 254 is i try to just do at morrow clearly there was another at morrow so 254 is my favorite number why is it my favorite number i don't know i don't think your favorite numbers are all that logical um for some reason when i was very little i picked it as my favorite number

i'm sticking by it because i'm loyal to my favorite number uh 254 so uh once i couldn't get at morrow i'm like okay uh let me a, you know, I've tried to pick something that no one else would have. So Atmorrow254. And so let me walk through different things. So one thing that I do on the site is whenever I see something, like I follow a bunch of things that are very magic oriented. I follow a few things that aren't magic oriented. And when I see things I think my followers will like, I will retweet them. So retweeting means you take...

So when you post something, it's called a tweet. So you can read other people's tweets and then let your followers see those tweets. It's called a retweet. So I can retweet things. So one of the things I do is I follow a lot of people, mostly magic people, that might have interesting things. And so if I see anything interesting, I will retweet it.

I would say about 90% to 95% of the stuff I retweet is magic-oriented stuff. But there's like 5%. There's a few things I follow. Or sometimes even the magic people I follow have something funny they'll post, and I'll be entertained by it. So I do post a few fun things that aren't magic-related. And I do a little bit personal stuff. I'll get to that in a second. But most of what I do is retweet sort of magic related stuff. Sometimes when I retweet, I will put comments on it. Most often I just retweet.

The other thing I do is whenever there's announcements to make, I will sometimes post things on there. If somebody else makes the announcement, I'll often just retweet the announcement. Like the official magic website, magic site, Twitter site, post something, I can retweet that. Oh, as a side note, by the way, if you

want to get on Twitter, Twitter has more magic related people on it than any other social media. You go to Tumblr, yeah, there's a bunch of people that it than any other social media. You go to Tumblr, yeah, there's a bunch of people that do magic stuff on Tumblr. I'm the only one I know that does Instagram or Google+.

I know a few people do Facebook. But really, the place, if you want to follow magic on social media, not everybody's on social media. I'm sorry, not everybody's on Twitter, but for example, of the designers, I'm on Twitter, Ken Nagel's on Twitter,

Ethan Fleischer's on Twitter, Sean Main's on Twitter, Gavin is on Twitter, I don't know if Jackie is, Jules is, Gottlieb, I think is, although he doesn't post very often. But like, for example, most of the design team is on. I think

almost all of the development team is on. Aaron is on. I mean, pretty much if you want to have inside news, and not only that, there are, Magic has an official Twitter site that posts a lot of things and a lot of previews. There are brand team members that are on.

There are creative team members that are on. Like, there's a lot, a lot, a lot of people that are on Twitter. I mean, in the high tens. You know, there's a lot of Magic-related things. Plus, there are a lot of other sites and other things that are on Twitter that are Magic-related. So, if you want Magic news, there is a lot of magic news you can get on Twitter. Anyway, back to my uses on Twitter. Okay, so I do a lot.

I will retweet things. I will put out information. Sometimes, for example, if there's just general confusion about something, I will post on Twitter. It's very common for me to... Usually I learn about things from my blog, although sometimes I learn them on Twitter. And then if I realize there's a misconception, usually I'll about things from my blog, although sometimes I learn them

on Twitter. And then if I realize there's a misconception, usually I'll post it on my blog and on Twitter saying, oh, people are worried about Thing X. Well, Thing X isn't happening, or don't worry about that. That's not true, or whatever. The other thing I do, some on Twitter, is I'll answer questions. I don't answer nearly as many questions on Twitter as I do on Tumblr. So if you really, really want me to answer questions, Tumblr is a better bet. But I do answer usually short, quick, quick, simple questions on Twitter. Some things are more complex and not that I don't occasionally try to answer more complex questions, but it's tough. But usually if people want to know something real basic, uh, I will try to answer if I can.

Um, uh, I do. So the way Twitter works is, um, there is an at, uh, I can read a thread, which is anybody who's writing directly to me. So the way Twitter works is when I post, you see anything I post, but if I, if I send it to somebody, meaning I start my tweet with somebody else's name, essentially, only that person and the people that follow me and that person will see it. So let's say I write to at Bob.

I'm making that up. There's no at Bob. But let's say I write to at Bob. Anybody who follows me and follows at Bob will see me responding to Bob. So sometimes people ask me questions, I'll respond to them, but the average person doesn't necessarily see me answering all the individual things because only people that follow me and that person will see it. And by the way, if you've never been on Twitter, Twitter is, when I first got on, I remember I compared Twitter to feeling like my stand-up days,

where there's a lot of just trying to be pithy in a short amount of time. I compared Twitter, the two things I compared Twitter to was poetry and stand-up comedy. Because a lot of times what you're trying to do in both is get your point across in the most succinct way possible. Comedy has, stand-up comedy has what we call one-liners. And Twitter reminds me a lot of a one-liner, which is,

I'm trying to be funny, but I have one line to do it. And poetry's a lot similar, where I'm trying to get a lot in very little space. And I enjoy the conservation of Twitter.

And, like, one of my general tips is, I will write something and just see how long it is and if it goes over because it tells you when it's over it'll tell you how many characters you're over and then I go back and go

oh do I need that word and a lot of what I learned is that the sentence I write I really always overwrite a little bit like I always can take out words and still have the meaning I need in it so I find Twitter is a good good lesson for

CrackNet. If you've never been on Twitter, I heartily say, if you want to be interconnected to magic, and the other thing that happens is when events happen, not just events in the world, which is also a cool way to learn events in the world, but when events happen in magic, in the magic ecosystem,

Twitter is the place to be. You're going to find out quickest if something happens. You know, there's a lot of magic people, a lot of people that deal with magic, not just on the wizard side, but all across, that if you really want to sort of follow the magic celebrity, if you will, Twitter's nice. And the nice thing with Twitter

is you can respond and interact with people. I respond all the time with people on Twitter. Twitter can write to me, and if I have easy answers or something I want, I will respond to people. I respond quite a bit on Twitter. And it's one of the big things about the age of social media.

Like, people write me questions on Tumblr, and I answer questions, but I get so many questions on Tumblr that the hit rate on Tumblr is a little smaller. It's not, by the way, that I answer, I answer more questions on Tumblr. Just way less people ask me questions on Twitter. Although, to be fair, probably if you want your question answered,

I answer a lot more questions on Tumblr. Anyway. But one of the neat things about Twitter is it gives you a chance to interact with people. There's a bunch of different famous people I've had a chance to interact with on Twitter. And it's quite a rush. You know, just like, oh, so-and-so. You know, like I did a podcast not too long ago about VidCon. And for example, I showed up at Anaheim. The event was in Anaheim. And I posted on Twitter saying, hey, I'm at VidCon. Does anybody have

any suggestions? I've never been here before with my daughter. And someone said, oh, Hank Green, the founder and CEO of VidCon, plays Magic. And I said, really? And then he replied. He goes, well, I do play not as much as I used to. I used to play a lot. I'm busy now, but I still play from time to time. And I was able to respond to him. And here I am

talking with Hank Green, the CEO of VidCon, the event I'm at. And that was pretty cool. And I've had a couple of VidCon, the event I'm at. That was pretty cool. And I've had a couple of experiences like that, which is pretty neat. So on the flip side, if you want to interact with me, it's one way to have that opportunity. Another thing that, by the way, another fun use that I have for Twitter is whenever I need to crowdsource information, I will go to Twitter. So for example, when I'm doing a column where I need people to ask me questions, I go to Twitter. Both because I have the most followers, because the system on

Twitter gives me nice, concise questions, and because it's just the fastest. If I ask it, I'll get questions within, you know, within half an hour, I'll have a whole list of questions I can ask. I also will ask, I mean, I mostly post magic stuff. I also post some personal stuff. And so if you want to get a little insight of me and my family, you know, Twitter will definitely do that. I'll occasionally post, I mean, I, mostly I write about magic, but you get a little sense of me on my Twitter. I also have fun that whenever I'm trying to figure something out, I do crowdsource a bit. Like, the perfect story story is we were at dinner one day. We were at Outback Steakhouse, for those that know that. And there's a little thing you can

play. We paid a buck or something to play table games. And one of the things was they were saying, okay, which do you, you know, answer these questions. And then you see if you answer the question the same as the majority answered the question. So one of the questions was, which is better? Which would you rather have, a flying carpet or a monkey butler? And so we got into a big fight whether a flying carpet or a monkey butler was the better thing. So I said, okay, we're going on my Twitter. I'm going to ask this question. And so Twitter, the same software lets me do the head-to-head.

It lets you ask questions. It lets you do surveys. And so I put a survey on, and like 4,000 people informed us on a four-to-one ratio that a flying carpet was better, which is what I said. So I do, I use Twitter.

I mean, I also use Twitter to gather actual information. Sometimes I need to know something. Sometimes the information is serious. Sometimes it's silly. But I do like to sort of interact with the public I like to I also use it

whenever I want to do something when I have a thought or a feeling whenever I want to make a quippy line Twitter's where I go to comment like I said Tumblr's where I go to answer things but Twitter's more where I go to comment so if I am feeling something and I'm allowed to say what I'm feeling, I will post it on Twitter.

Sometimes I'm known for doing cryptic things on Twitter where I go, Oh, when you guys know what I did today, you're going to be so excited, but I can't tell you for 16 months. I do that occasionally. People yell at me for teasing them. But hey, if you don't want to be teased you should not follow my Twitter the I think other big uses for Twitter I will

oh I do preview cards on Twitter so one of the rules about the preview cards is the people who have

the most followers get the most preview cards because we're trying to get a lot of eyeballs on it and I have the biggest Twitter following the most preview cards because we're trying to get a lot of eyeballs on it. And I have the biggest Twitter following at Wizards. I think the magic

Twitter might be ahead of me now, but I'm up there. For individuals, for sure, I'm number one. But anyway, I almost always get a preview card, and I don't just want to give it away. So one of the things I always do is I will put a little puzzle or something out,

and I make people figure it out. They have to earn it. You guys have to earn your preview. And so I'll do different games. I've done, it varies, I've done cryptograms, and I've done little quizzes, and I've done a bunch of different things. And then I will show off the card. Usually, I make people earn it on Twitter, and then once they earn it there, I put it on all my social media

so you Tumblr people get a free ride as do you Google Plus people and you Instagram people too Twitter is where I make you earn it and I will from time to time I occasionally I'll do trivia on Twitter

and when I see things that I find funny, I will post them on Twitter from time to time if something funny happens at work. I don't often do vines, but occasionally a vine is an up to six second video that's part of YouTube.

What's in a blue moon do a vine? In fact, I have a vine of me trying to high five Matt Tabak that is, like, getting close to half a million tweet views, which is, or whatever, Vine views. What else do I do on my Twitter account? I... What else do I do?

Uh, every once in a while I'll live tweet things. I don't do that very often. Um, where I, I'm at something and I'll sort of, while it's happening, talk about it. Um, usually the thing I live tweet, uh, um, when we do parties, like when we do, um, at PAX sometimes we'll do parties, we'll reveal cards. And a lot of times I'll live tweet the party. So as cards get previeweded I'll show off the cards and stuff

I also, where I can, do some behind the scenes stuff I try to have fun on Twitter one of the things I try to do is I make people say, hey, if you love magic and you just want to sort of get behind the scenes stuff Twitter tends to be more visual, I'm more likely to put pictures there.

Although, I will sometimes if I have a cool picture, I'll post it both on Tumblr and Twitter. But Twitter is definitely where I, when I have a thought, that's where I tend to put it most. So, you get a little sight. Twitter is weird for me in that sometimes I'm super active and sometimes a little less

active. I will always, every weekday, I will always post head-to-head and Tales from the Pit. And I will post my, like I said, I'll do that every single day. So, like, bare minimum on Twitter, you'll get that every day. It depends kind of what's going on. It also depends, I will answer questions and things. So, sometimes people don't see that if you're not following. You can, by the way, there's a way to follow

you can follow everything I say regardless of who I'm saying it to. There's a way to do that. I don't know if I'm ahead how to do that, though. There's some stuff like TweetDeck and some places where you can watch that give you more options than the traditional Twitter client does.

Oh, another cool thing, a real quick story. So, there's this thing on Twitter called verification. And what it does is, Twitter realized a while back that there's a problem where celebrities often will, people will imitate them, and that they

wanted a way for people to know, you know, when it says it's Scarlett Johansson, it's really Scarlett Johansson, or pick your celebrity. It's really Robert Downey Jr. Naming Avengers. So one of the things is, you know, I have a decent amount of followers. 50,000, 55,000. So I wanted to get verified forever.

But it's not something that you just can ask for. It's kind of something where they come to you. And so one day I was on Twitter and somebody asked me about verification and I'm like, I'd love to get verified, but I don't know how to do it. And then somebody else posted and said, hey, I work at Twitter. Why don't you talk with me? And so he helped

figure, like there's a process, so he helped me figure out how to work the process and I submitted things and I got verified. So if you look at my Twitter, you'll see a little check mark in a blue circle, which means I'm a verified Twitter verified. So if you look at my Twitter, you'll see a little checkmark in a blue circle, which means I'm a verified Twitter follower. So I was very excited. It's actually so funny.

I got verified, and I went home to my wife. I'm like, I got verified, I got verified. And she's like, I have no idea what that means. I go, on Twitter. She goes, yeah, I don't know anything about what you're talking about. And I explained to her that if she understood it, it would be very exciting. But she was happy that I was happy, but I had no idea what I was talking about. My wife is not on social media.

But she would know if you were on my Twitter. But anyway, I'm almost at work. So really what I wanted to say today is there are a lot of fun things I do on Twitter. There's previews I do on Twitter. There's behind-the-scenes pictures and stuff I do on Twitter. There's a lot of funny thoughts. I do a lot of retweeting of things I think are relevant um so if you are well if you

are on Twitter I hope that you already follow me but if you don't please follow me and if you're not on Twitter um it's something I want to check out it is of all the social media I use it's the one I find the most useful especially for current events. Like I'm saying, I literally, if I want to know news now, I don't turn on the TV. I don't even go on the internet. I go to Twitter. Twitter is by far the most fastest

and most efficient way to learn news. You need to make sure you follow a good wide variety of people. That's the other trick for Twitter is if you follow people too much like yourself, you'll sometimes miss things because it'll go, oh, you like these kind of things, and it'll shield you a little bit from the rest of the world. So you've got to make sure you follow a variety of people so you can see different kinds of things.

That's important. But anyway, I'm in my parking space. So, oh, today was a little quicker. This is quicker than normal. Oh, wait a second. So I'm at 25 minutes. So what happened was I dropped off Adam, and I guess I must have hit really good traffic.

So let me add one or two minutes here. I like to be close to 30 minutes. Normally my ride is 30 minutes, but when I drop Adam off sometimes, usually traffic slows me down, so I end up being about 30. But I see that I'm a little short. Somebody say anything else about Twitter

that I can talk about. Let's see. What else about Twitter that I can talk about? Let's see. What else can I talk about? The other fun thing that happens on Twitter is there are a lot of personalities on Twitter. So if you follow different people, I will goof around a lot with other magic celebrities, if you will. And so, I mean, one of the nice things is we all know each other. You know, I've been obviously doing this forever, and so I, you know,

I know a lot of the other magic celebrities, and so we will goof around a lot, especially in R&D. R&D will goof on Twitter quite a bit, and we'll make fun of each other and just do silly things. So if you kind of want to, like, one of the fun things about Twitter is you get

a chance to see the camaraderie of R&D, of some of the different match celebrities. I mean, we all know each other, and so we goof around with one another. And so it's kind of fun to watch and see that happen. I think that's kind of cool. Another thing that happens on Twitter is

the links. So when I talk about retweets, what that means is people will post things and I'll retweet them. But one of the most common things that happens on Twitter is that people will see content elsewhere on the Internet that they like. Articles or different things, and then they will link to it and they'll do a hot link. And so the idea is that Twitter says, oh, check this out, and then you can click on it and you can go see the article. And so Twitter's also been a real good sampler. Like, one of the nice things about being on Twitter is it really, like, if you want to

know what are the relevant articles, what are the hot things on the internet right now, Twitter does a really good job of calling a lot of that and letting you see it and going, okay, I don't necessarily like, I mean, I'm on a bunch of social media, but I find Twitter's the thing that most says, hey, have you seen this? And then that's the thing people are talking about. So Twitter's really good at looking at links.

It's also good at pictures and things. I mean, one of the things you need to figure out is who you want to follow and that it also does a really good job. Like, one of the things, for to figure out is who you want to follow and that it also does a really good job. Like, one of the things, for example, is, like, I follow The Onion, for example, because one of the things I learned is the funniest thing about The Onion is the headlines.

And so what they tweet is the headline. Now, sometimes if you want, you can go read the article. I don't actually read that many Onion articles, but I love the headlines because most of the joke is in the headline. So that's a fun thing. Twitter, there's all sorts of things. If you want to get on Twitter, there's so many different things, let alone in magic.

Just in magic, there are like I said, there's 50 plus people that are just wizards employees. There's another 100, 200, 300 magic celebrities. There's lots of different people there. Depending on the websites maybe you care about,

there's just lots of things going on where you can see things. I also do things like I take all my stuff, like my articles and my podcast stuff and post it there. If you only follow Twitter, you'll see my linking to things. You don't necessarily need to individually go to them, although you still can. I'm not stopping you

from doing that. What else happens on Twitter? Last things on Twitter. The other thing that I think is interesting about Twitter is, oh, here's my final thing on Twitter, is one of the things that I always do when I post something is I put it, I always type it in, then I read it, then I go, should I hit send? And there's a lot of self-censoring

that goes on on Twitter, but I hit send sometimes when I go, maybe I should hit send. I'm better than most of not hitting send. There's a few other members of R&D that are a little more,

let's send it. But you definitely sort of, I think it gives you an insight behind the scenes. It's a little different. It's pretty personal and has a lot of sort of, I don't know, I think it's kind of fun. Really my lesson, my message of the day today is

if you aren't on Twitter, consider Twitter. Twitter's a lot of fun and especially if you care about magic and the magic ecosystem and the magic community, there's a lot there, and there's a lot you can sort of intermix with, which is fun. And if you're on Twitter but you don't follow me, come on! You listen to my podcast, you don't follow my Twitter?

You follow my Twitter. Okay, now that I checked, I've now passed the 30-minute mark. So I can now feel that I've given you now passed the 30 minute mark so I now can I can now feel that I've given you a full 30 minutes of content anyway I'm now in my

parking space so we all know what that means it means it's the end of my drive to work instead of talking magic it's time to meet me making magic

and Twitter see you guys next time bye bye