Tweet Tuesdays: yet another social media get-together

We have Social Media Breakfast (SMB), Mobile Mondays and Web Wednesdays.

We have groups like The Digital Movement (TDM) and e27 running all kinds of events from Barcamps to Blogouts to Unconferences, with much of the content revolving around social media and start-ups.

Do we really need another social media get-together platform in Singapore?

The folks behind 24seven — bloggers Claudia Lim and Kelvin Lim — think so. And thus Tweet Tuesdays was born.

The first session was run a week ago at The Sail last Tuesday. I got a facebook invite from Claudia, wondered what the heck Tweet Tuesday was, and so turned up for a look-see.

“It’s not supposed to be another stand-around-and-network-whilst-eating-free-food session,” said Kelvin in his opening introduction to the gathered crowd of about 50 to 60 social media bloggers, many who attended (like me) due to word-of-mouth facebook invites.

So what is it supposed to be? According to the organisers, it is supposed to be a platform on micro-blogging (i.e. Twitter and Plurk) — at least initially — and an opportunity for folks to share tips, tricks, and tools for this platform. It’s also a community potluck, and future sessions are likely to be run in an unconference-styled format.

According to an informal online poll done by the 24seven folks prior to the meetup, the attendees for the first Tweet Tuesday event in Singapore seem to be quite social media savvy:

I asked Claudia what made this different from SMB, and her response was that SMB is better for networking (i.e. stand around and network whilst eating free food). Both she and Kelvin want Tweet Tuesdays to be a little more structured, which would serve the community in a different way. Mobile Mondays and Web Wednesdays are run from a corporate perspective, which is different when it is organised from a bottoms-up grassroots community.

My take? I couldn’t see much difference between the first Tweet Tuesday meetup and the SMB sessions. Yet. But it’s the first get-together, it’s community run, there was pizza and beer, so it was pretty fun. It’s work to organise something, even if it’s a grassroots event (that’s something the Techgoondus know firsthand), so kudos. Still, hopefully any future sessions will have more structure, which will give Tweet Tuesdays its own niche.