I caught up this morning with my intellectually curious friend, Noah Brier. By morning, Noah’s the founder of likemind.us, an international network of like-minded people that meet for coffee. By day, he’s a strategist at Naked Communications, the communications planning agency. And by night, he creates cool little Web apps like Brand Tags (trust me — it’s cool!).

With Flipcam in hand, I cornered Noah at this morning’s likemind New York in Greenwich Village. A good sport, he shared his thoughts on likemind and the future of Brand Tags.

We might be on the verge of Tweetering out on why-Twitter-matters analysis — yes, I know I’m guilty. Nonetheless, my former colleague, branding guru extraordinaire, Pete Blackshaw has a nice piece on Twitter psychographics. He offers the following Machiavelli-inspired segments:

• TweetBacks. These are folks who use Twitter as a real-time focus group for immediate feedback
• TimeTweeters. These folks just love to “punch the clock” with a time-stamped discovery before anyone else.
• FlackSmackers. These are journalists or high-reach bloggers who use Twitter to publicly complain — nay, groan — about lame PR or shill-induced pitches.
• SpamSneakers. These are the folks who use Twitter as just another marketing channel for preexisting content.
• BrandBaggers. These folks “bag” anything related to their brands and use tools like Twitter as a customer-service or resolution proxy.
• BankRunners. These are the folks who post “end is near unless you act now” messages, potentially eliciting a sense of panic — a run on the bank, if you will — among Twitterites.
• RingCiters. These are the folks with real or virtual ring-side seats at sporting events who can’t resist sharing even most mundane play-by-play, as though the rest of Twitter Nation is glued to their modern day Howard Cossel-inspired tweets.
• Tweetniks. People who try to write literature with Twitter. Every once and a while you’ll find someone turning Twitter into haiku.
• FamilyTweeters. These are folks (like myself) who tweet about the most mundane of family-related issues.
• ProudRouters. Quintessential connectors, these folks love to forward things from other Twitter posts.
• TravelTeasers. These are the folks who create a bit of mystery about exactly where they are.
• WeightWatchmen. These folks believe Twitter’s potential for peer pressure might have motivational value for losing weight or achieving some other major goal.
• TweetSquaters. These are folks (sinister or entrepreneurial, depending on your view) who squat on well-known Twitter names.
• AdverTweeters. Lots of brands are tweeting these day, observes Machiavelli.
• Twitterazi. Even worse than paparazzi, Machiavelli warned.
• GameTrappers. These folks post Twitter messages to an entire distribution list hoping to snare an unsuspecting target to respond (usually in error) to the entire group.

See Pete’s ClickZ column.

Below is also my latest MediaPost column...the result of regurgitating past posts and reader comments…

Why Twitter Matters - And Why I Just Might Follow You

I use Twitter, the micro-blogging platform. Each post is limited to 140 characters, so it instills succinct, efficient expression. And you only receive regular posts from those people you choose to follow, so you can eliminate attention polluters. While Twitter is significant in its own right, most significant is what it represents: the arrival of short-form communications, specially tailored for our growing attention deficit and love for instant gratification.

So someone recently asked me what value I get out of Twitter. Here’s the deal:

First, it fulfills basic human needs of self-expression, and I’m not afraid to admit that. Sometimes I spontaneously express how I’m feeling, while others times what I’m doing. Sometimes I document events, while at other times I express deep thoughts or analysis. Sometimes I’m too preoccupied for Twitter, but most times it works itself regularly into my workflow of life.

Second, it has become an important means of one-to-one and one-to-group communications. I estimate that 10% of my one-to-one communications take place on Twitter now. While it’s contributed to my problem of socialnetworkitis, sometimes it’s just the most convenient way to reach someone directly with a private message. This is especially true if you want to respond directly to something someone said on Twitter, and even more so if you know someone is more apt to respond on Twitter versus some other digital platform, like email. For one to many communications, it’s simple, straightforward and selective.

Third, Twitter’s a great platform to cultivate trusted members in a customized community - to solicit feedback and spark interaction on real questions and issues of everyday life and business. I can pose a question to my community and almost always expect numerous responses back - whether a request for a restaurant recommendation, a proposal to meet spontaneously for a social meeting, or to secure participants for a mini-brainstorm. This week I even announced the death of a family member and received several thoughtful gestures - both public and private. Your Twitter community tends to reward you in proportion to how much time you spend nurturing and pruning it.

Finally, Twitter posts are published quickly and, usually, publicly. While there are risks and obligations with that, there’re also huge benefits and opportunities associated with being spontaneous and visible. It’s part of being in the conversation, and managing your digital reputation. Twitter has critical mass - at least with several of my personal and business circles.

If I’ve convinced you there’s value in Twitter, the next question is: How do you grow and prune your Twitter community? Minding the values above, I’m open to anyone following me, but I’m relatively selective in who I’ll follow. This is fundamental to cultivating a meaningful Twitter community - something that develops over time, and requires maintenance. So below are my five strategies for deciding whom I follow and whom I won’t.

1. If I’m interested in you, and you are on Twitter, I may follow you. In other words, I’ll initiate the connection.
2. If you follow me and I already know and like you, I’ll most likely follow you back.
3. If you follow me and I don’t know you, I’ll quickly check out your Twitter page. If you link to a blog, I’ll review that. Next, I’ll review your most recent 10 Twitter posts. If they are aligned with me, and offer value, I’ll follow you.
4. If you have exponentially more follows versus followers, I probably won’t follow you back. That probably means you’re either following me for no other reason than to pollute my attention (spam), or you’re just completely random and unselective in whom you allow to cloud your own attention. I suspect Twitter users with a 3:1 ratio of follows versus followers, or any number of follows greater than 500.
5. If I follow you and you become actively misaligned with my Twitter values, I’ll probably stop following you very quickly.

That’s my strategy for extracting value out of Twitter. What’s yours?

Guy Kawasaki, one of my marketing heroes, emailed me yesterday to tell me that that this blog kicks ass. Seriously? Surprisingly, and ultimately, yes. He selected AttentionMax as one of the top marketing sites for his Alltop content aggregator. What exactly is Alltop?

We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. We’ve grouped these collections — ”aggregations” — into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, celebrity gossip, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. At each Alltop site, we display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page — we call this “single-page aggregation.”

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points — they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In this way, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation.”

I told Guy that I don’t have huge audience reach, although I do have high quality readers from interactive marketing, media, search and analytics industries. (You’re reading this — aren’t you?) He said: “We’re the same way. So far, anyway. :-)”

Thanks, Guy! Check out the entire Alltop marketing list.

Importantly, I don’t take myself that seriously.

My cousin Ariel died a few hours ago after a three-year bout with bone cancer. She turned fifteen a few months ago. I’m relieved her suffering has ended, and her spirit can be free. Ariel underwent hell, but still was the epitome of optimism and selflessness — always, even until the end. I’ll always remember and aspire to that.

I especially feel for Ariel’s mother, my aunt, who’s been by her side the entire time. Not surprising, they had an especially strong and rare bond. She has a long road of grieving ahead.

I’m not religious, but I thought I’d repost this “Bible Verse Of The Day,” which appeared on Ariel’s Facebook page today:

Ecclesiastes 7:14 When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future.

The next few days are all about Ariel, but this chapter underscores why you must cherish every single minute you have alive with your loved ones, especially your kids. I came straight home today and hugged Julian, and hugged Laura when she got home

Finally, speaking of Facebook, I just checked and discovered the first few goodbyes have already arrived on Ariel’s Wall.

We’ll miss you, Ariel

UPDATE: the local newspaper’s obituary.