But there is the thing: Twitter is global, real-time, interactive and deceiving. I say it is deceiving because you think that short little bursts of text would beget a similarly short response. But this is how it actually happens as I’m getting ready to go to bed for the night:

Friend1: @acafourek Did you see this? http://tinyurl.com/36whqy

Me: @friend Yeah I love Legos and I love Star Wars so it is hilarious! Very original!

Friend2: @acafourek You like Star Wars? I had no idea! Did you know that @newperson also likes Legos?

Friend1: @acafourek Yeah, I got it from @randomdude

Friend3: @Friend2 & @acafourek Star Trek is better than Star Wars. But you like YouTube, try out Viddler.

NewPerson2: Retweet from @Friend1: Did you see this? http://tinyurl.com/36whqy

And now folks, we are off to the friggin’ races. Because now I have to come back and defend Star Wars against Star Trek, give my two cents on Viddler and then check out@ newperson @randomdude and @NewPerson2 to see if I want to follow them. That involves checking out their latest tweets, their overall follow/following ratio and glancing at their blog if they have one. Time spent watching Eddie Izzard’s hilarious Death Star Canteen bit rendered by Legos: 3 minutes. Time spent in follow up conversation about it: 2 hours.

My point is this: The Conversation will happen without you if you don’t show up for it. The above example is just an example of a potentially funny exchange between friends about a hilarious YouTube clip, but what generally happens is someone will tweet an idea, observation or question about any topic and then sometimes it will start a buzz of conversation. If you don’t see it until the next morning, you generally miss out on the conversation completely so you have to jump into the fray right then. And to be courteous, if you try and refute someone else’s stance, you are obligated to read their response which means you have to stick around for awhile.

Some of the great things about twitter are that it is not as in-your-face realtime as IMing someone nor is it as prone to drawn-out treatises as forums are. But at the same time, to truly engage with other people you have have a sort of timeliness about your interaction and this is what I’ve noticed start to happen on twitter. There are bursts of conversation and then periods of relative calm. It seems like between 9:00 and 10:00 CST is when it gets really fired up. My theory is that most of the world is awake right around then. It is morning in India, afternoon in Australia and late evening in the Americas. Much of our worldwide network of friends is available for bouncing things to and from.

I call it The Conversation because it is when there is a buzz going somewhere about just about anything you might want to jump into. And as much as my part of The Conversation involves twitter, it is actually multi-platform. You can tweet a link to a video or a blog, have a discussion on twitter and in the blog’s comments, Stumble the link, share it on del.icio.us and post it to a relevant facebook group. This is what sucks us in is that distribution of interaction, the multi-channel feedback mechanism that drives the entire idea of social media. Since it lives on different sites and is not run by any select group of people..it pretty much pops up whenever it wants and focuses on whatever topic happens to seize the day.

You have no control over when The Conversation happens or what it is about. With that kind of uncertainty, you had really better stick around and see where it goes, huh?

Note: I spent far longer looking for a picture/image/graphic to include in this post than I would care to admit. I found none that Iiked or were not cheesy…so if you have one in mind, let me know and I’ll include it.

So I’m going to attempt a list of sorts of great people that should be followed, subscribed to and connected with. Of course I think my family is pretty great and I would say that they are unlikely to read this, but it seems that my relatives have just recently discovered my blog. So thanks to them for leaving cozy comments like these over the last few weeks.

These are the Good People across the internet I think you should follow closely because they are really pretty great!:

• Nick Trusty is a long-time friend of mine who is now out in NYC. If you ever need a contact in the talent agency business, touch base with him and he’ll know who to talk to.
• Michelle Compton happens to be Nick’s significant other and also a good friend of mine who focuses on international women’s and children’s non-profit organizations. (and she is incidentally looking for a job, so if you know of anything, be sure to give her a shout). She also reminded me that today is more than just GPD08.
• Lisa Young is my manager at Outrider and she has a great blog geared towards moms and has been tapped into social media since the beginning so she is a great source of knowledge if you ever need anything.
• I also work with Reem Abeidoh and Tanner Hobin , both of whom know just about everything you could know about social media and online communities.
• Sam Harrelson might be one of the smartest guys out there on the internet. I’ve tuned into his podcast more than a few times and his twitter feed is really insightful to the world of the internet and marketing. Not only that, but the guy is getting a PhD in Assyriology. Impressed? Of course you are.
• Jeremiah Owyang is an analyst with Forrester and he also runs a popular web strategy blog. It just so happens that I once left a comment on this blog and ended up getting my current job from it. Jeremiah is always available for questions and guidance and he frequently offers great insights to the industry as a whole so be sure to check him out.
• Matt Dickman is a great blogger out of Cleavland who has awesome videos breaking down new sites and web concepts as well as regular posts that offer a great look at how brands should be interacting with their customers.
• Another blogger/new media evangelist is Jonathan Coffman who specializes in the new media evangelism and convergence journalism. He has some interesting projects in the pipeline built on Adobe Air that harness social media for traditional media outlets.
• Nick O’Neill runs the Social Times and AllFacebook.com and he does a great job with both. I don’t think I could ever blog quite as much as Nick does, but he offers great quick insights to developments in the social networking space.
• Connie Bensen is a community manager at ACDSee and does great work as well on the Web Strategy facebook group which is really a great knowledge base. As well, her blog is a great resource for both newcomers and veterans of the social space. And as a side note, she is from my native land of Minnesota, so she has to be awesome, right?
• David Gillespie is a marketing specialist and blogger over in Australia who also happens to play a little bit of music on the side that I happen to think is awesome. So check out his blog and pick up his album while you’re at it!
• Garret Pendergraft is a Philosophy PhD student out in California who once upon a time was my TA in both Ethics and Logic. Honest to God, because of those classes I think I understand the world in a very different context than I did before. Or at least I am able to more effectively articulate it. So in my opinion, Pen is for sure worth tuning into. He is also new to twitter so go follow him .
• Of course I have to say Gary Vaynerchuk is pretty awesome because this entire movement was his brainchild! Gary has an awesoem blog that really puts things into perspective sometimes. If you aren’t watching him, you better start.

I’m sure I’ve left as few people off on this first pass so I will come up with my second list later tonight! But these are all great people and I appreciate all that I’ve learned from each of them and I’m sure you will too, so go check them out!

Also, to see the entire internet coming together in this meme, check out the blog I built last night at GoodPeopleDay2008.com .

#GPD08

Anyway, Gary is one of those guys who defaults to seeing the good in everything and has a knack for seeing potential in things that others take for granted. So today, he was struck with inspiration during a conversation with Adam Hirsch , a writer over at Mashable.com and out sprung the video I’ve embedded below. Check it out and tell me with a straight face that you aren’t excited about it.

So, tomorrow reach out to someone; call an old friend; write a blog post thanking your readers for stopping by or thanking those people who have positively influenced you to get you where you are today; twitter a thank you to everyone you have following you, after all you invade their computer screen multiple times a day! Tell other people why the people you follow or the people who follow you are the best. Sell your friends to the world; if you scratch some one else’s back and boost their personal brand, I guarantee it will come back to you twice as strong one day!

This is Gary’s original post with the above video:

I want to try to get the WHOLE INTERNET COmmunity behind this mission I have to make sure that tomorrow people write and talk abd blog and twitter and just flat out SING about people that are AWESOME and GOOD. It is time that we take control of the fact that WE are the media and pump out a day tomorrow that will make NOISE across this WORLD! Please take the time tonight to gather your thoughts as you come up with ideas on how to spread the word about AWESOME people! I am looking for blog posts, twitters, powncers, facebooking, digging, flickring, stumpling on all things that are good about PEOPLE!
Please tag all work “GPD08?

So reach out and touch someone and help push the idea that social media can rally people around a positive message and help draw the world closer together. We walk around with our iPods in everyday and toon out the rest of the world because we are too busy jamming in our heads while we twitter about traffic… well tomorrow is the day to show that all this technology can build us up together rather than separate us across a digital divide.

Tomorrow I’ll post my thank you post for GPD08. (Good People Day 2008!)