[Note to new visitors: You may be interested in this post about Twitter: "The Public Editor Joins the Cocktail Party."]
Updated March 13, 2011. Hello, and thanks for visiting my personal blog, which is mostly about coffee, with a little bit about social media and technology.
It is likely that you arrived at this welcome page by clicking the link on my Twitter profile. This post is my primitive method for tracking traffic from Twitter.
My name is Patrick LaForge. I have been an editor at The New York Times since 1997, after a dozen years as a reporter and editor at newspapers in upstate New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania. I started using Twitter in early 2007, when Sewell Chan and I created the City Room blog for The Times. In May 2009, I left City Room and the metro desk to become the editor in charge of the copy desks.
How I Use Twitter
I generally post updates about Web content I am reading, watching or thinking about, not what I had for lunch. I follow hundreds of people who use Twitter the same way — a collection of active linkers, journalists, bloggers, New Yorkers, Times staffers and readers.
You can see what Twitter looks like to me by viewing my Twitterstream list of the 800 or so accounts I follow and read every day. I find it hard to follow more people than that and read every tweet. If you are interested in a high-signal list that is mostly links and retweets, try my list “Linkers”, the people I rely on to recommend the latest, best content on Twitter and the Web.
I do not automatically return follows, but if you engage with me and provide interesting content, the odds are I will add you to my twitterstream.
And if you are not among the people I follow directly, but you seem nice enough (and not a spammer or commercial bot), I may add you to the few thousand accounts on The Mighty List, when I get a chance. (For some reason, Twitter allows me to go above the 500-account cap on these lists, and I’m not sure why — perhaps it’s a glitch, or perhaps it’s because I was a lists beta-tester or have a verified account.)
If you are relatively new to Twitter, you might be interested in this post, “Basic Twitter Links for Journalists.”
About The Times and Twitter
If you have a question about The Times, I will try to answer it, but you may be better off putting the question to the paper’s social media editor, Jennifer Preston, her new deputy, Liz Heron, or the public relations team, @NYTimesComm. You can find more Times staffers on Twitter by looking at the staff list at @nytimes on Twitter.
You may have heard that The Times has “banned” the word tweet in its pages. That is not true. We do discourage its overuse and encourage less colloquial language in serious contexts. If you want to read an accurate account, see this post on After Deadline, the style and grammar blog kept by our standards editor, Phil Corbett, or read my comments on Steve Buttry’s blog. There’s more here, too.
Other Places I Share Links
Only some of the links I share on Twitter come from The Times. If you want to see other links that I am reading, see my Google Reader profile. Sometimes I bookmark articles that are specifically about the future of journalism and media on my Delicious page. And lately I have been fooling around with a Tumblr page. My other Web homes, with varying levels of activity, are listed at the left.
If we are acquaintances or friends, find me on Facebook. Sorry, I don’t accept friend requests from people I don’t know.
How Do You Use Twitter?
Send me an email, or leave a comment here on the blog. I read them all.
For more of my thoughts on Twitter, blogging and social media, see these other posts. (I don’t blog much these days. If I do, it is usually about coffee.)
Or, you can just head back to Twitter. You’re probably missing something…
June 20, 2009 at 11:37 am
[...] Posts Third-Party iPhone Apps Update 3Third-Party iPhone Apps I Actually UseWelcome, Twitter Users2 Shots and a Cup of Indian MysoreAnother Fine Coffee From Finca SantuarioThird-Party iPhone Apps [...]
June 21, 2009 at 2:05 pm
[...] To Twitter Users [...]
June 22, 2009 at 11:37 am
[...] To Twitter Users [...]
July 15, 2009 at 7:44 am
good morning! my name is ursula i am also journalist. livi in brazil.I would like to maintain contact with you by email or Twitter to lay idéias.good morning, and thank you.
March 7, 2010 at 1:09 am
Hello, Patrick!
Since I had the pleasure of spending a bit of time here browsing around, it seemed only polite to say hello.
And I am now following your Twitter list. I LOVE Twitter — I’m not on it constantly, like some, but I use it in a similar fashion to you — I curate the best stuff for other people, and I have other people curate the best stuff for me. And then, at some point, the people who share my values, who find the same stuff that I do interesting and important — well, we inevitably collide. It’s always awesome when that happens.
I’m also always fascinated by anything NYTimes-y. There’s just so much equity in that brand name. When I was a kid, my mom would read me stories from the Times the way other moms read their kids children’s books. And this place where publishing is going now — it’s just amazing. I understand the pitfalls, but I can’t help but be entranced by warp speed at which it’s all changing.
At any rate, so glad I met you over a RT.
Appropriately enough, it was “if you want to go fast, go alone. if you want to go far, go with others.”
I’m in it for far.
Cheers, Lisa
July 23, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for following me on Twitter. I enjoy your content, and I think you’ve got a great handle on some of the best ways of using social media.
From one coffee lover to another, I’ve enjoyed perusing your entries here as well.
All best,
Word Bandit
p.s. Just saw your Blip link. Nice choices in your feed.
March 13, 2011 at 12:20 pm
[...] More Twitter Info [...]
March 13, 2011 at 10:51 pm
[...] Twitter UserID: palafo Name: Patrick LaForge Location: New York City Followers count: 11049 Favourites count: 3584 Friends Count:1055 Joined twitter on: Fri Mar 23 00:00:00 EDT 2007 Speaks: en URL: http://palafo.com/2009/05/31/welcome-twitter-users/ [...]
April 13, 2011 at 11:33 am
[...] had forgotten about Tiger Beat magazine until I saw this Tweet from editor Patrick LaForge of The New York Times: “Creator of Tiger Beat is dead at 87. http://t.co/JSxgjS0 [...]
January 12, 2012 at 4:56 pm
[...] He uses Twitter to mostly send out links/retweets of stories he finds interesting. He makes it clear that non-NYT links/RT are not endorsements. The web site he uses gives an even longer description of how he uses Twitter: http://palafo.com/2009/05/31/welcome-twitter-users/ [...]