JULY 3, 2008

What’s A Twebinar?

Last week I took part in something called a Twebinar. Hosted by Radian6 and Chris Brogan, the Twebinar was an experiment in combining Twitter with an online video conference. Pre-taped videos streamed through the webinar site, but the real action took place on Twitter, where participants posted commentary on the conference content. Thanks to services like Summize and Twemes, people could view the entire conversation as it was happening.

Unlike my colleagues Gayle and Steve, I’m definitely a Twitter advocate because it matches my communication preferences. I enjoy being able to quickly shoot out a thought or question, and I enjoy the ease with which I can have a short back-and-forth with another Twitter user. When I saw the opportunity to take part in a much larger, themed conversation over Twitter, I immediately wanted try it.

In a way, the Twebinar took my Twitter use to a totally new level. Participating was much like diving headlong into white water rapids. As soon as I got onto Summize to watch the conversation, I could barely keep up with all the tweets streaming in. Here’s an idea of what the activity was like…

• Twitscoop reported in the middle of the hour that there had been about 1 tweet per second since the Twebinar started.
• Radian6 wrote a wrap-up post that showed a dramatic spike in web traffic to Twebinar.com.
• Overall, 1,500 people registered for the Twebinar.

I dove into the conversation by picking out interesting remarks and responding to them. It got much easier over time, especially after I adjusted to the rapid flow of discussion. My adrenaline was pumping, I had multiple windows open, and I was multi-tasking like no tomorrow. The Twebinar demanded 100% of my attention. I don’t think I’d ever had such a prolonged engagement with Twitter; usually, I only visit the site for a few minutes to catch up on friends’ tweets and to type a quick 140-character update myself.

So what was the best part about the Twebinar? Twitter’s format allowed me to talk to anyone I wanted. I could make a remark directly to any of the featured speakers with a good chance that they would read it. And since hundreds of people were watching the stream of updates, there was always a good chance that you would get some responses to your thoughts if you continued to participate. By the end of the day, I even had 7 new followers to my personal Twitter account. The Twebinar was great experiment in a new, “social conference” format.

There are still many kinks that the Twebinar needs to work out– for instance, there is no program that can integrate Twitter and webcast software into one window, so participants are forced to switch between several windows to get the full experience. This was, however, a first attempt, so there’s a lot of room for improvement.

There are two more Twebinars coming up in this series, and I plan on attending both of them to see this idea grow and mature. There is a lot of potential for making professional contacts through the Twebinar, and it’s a far more direct and personal way to do it than gathering business cards.