Thursday night at Viget Labs in Falls Church, Social Media Club DC met for a presentation by Jim Long (@newmediajim) of Verge New Media on Twitter. Jim is a well-known cameraman and journalist for NBC Universal, and is a great example of someone who uses Twitter the way it was designed to be used.

The presentation of “best practices” took some different twists and turns due to a very interactive audience (which was great), but the one section that I enjoyed was the idea of Twitter providing “ambient intimacy” between users. As said by Lisa Reichelt:

It makes us feel closer to people we care for but in whose lives we’re not able to participate as closely as we’d like.

Jim had numerous examples of sentimental Twitter moments where he was happy to share in both exciting and sad news with his network. The feeling that people out there in “Twitter-land” cared about him and his well-being, and were able to share and relate to his successes and sadness (for example during the Virginia Tech shootings earlier this year), provide a medium for communication that is accessible, user-friendly, and best of all (according to Jim), mobile.

We also talked about the idea that Participation is Marketing, and that his experience with Twitter is that it’s his way of sharing things that excite him, encourage participation, ask for help, and overall give a talkback channel and “human face” back to NBC - also getting people to turn their TVs back on and watch the news.

Jim’s view on Twitter best practices include:

• Get out and DO IT!
• Listen
• Engage
• Celebrate others
• Be relevant/add to conversation
• Promote yourself!

A good time was had by all, and it was great to see some old and new faces at the event. Special thanks to Viget Labs for hosting us and to Rana Sobhany for streaming Jim live on ustream.

In addition to those of us who were able to actually attend the event, the Twitter world was following along, including Connie Reece (@conniereece) and Cathryn Hrudicka (@CreativeSage). It was pretty cool that people were able to participate in any way possible.

For those of you who were unable to attend, here are some links highlighting the event.

Shashi Bellamkonda from My Digital Thoughts highlights some of the attendees and topics of conversation.

Brian Williams of Viget posts his thoughts on Twitter and how it created a conversation about an issue with Mixx.

Nick O’Neill of the Social Times was a step ahead of us.

Paul Hyland posts his thoughts.

Live stream of the presentation can be found here: