RadioBDC Logo
Happy | Mitski Listen Live
 
 
Text size +

The Friday Five: Boston Twitterers Worth Following

Posted by Scott Kirsner  August 7, 2009 07:10 AM

E-mail this article

Invalid E-mail address
Invalid E-mail address

Sending your article

fitton.jpg
The Friday Five is a list of five things worth knowing about.

This week, it's people from the Boston innovation economy who are worth following on Twitter. The list includes people from tech and biotech, entrepreneurs, investors, and social media experts.

- @ToddDOwl: Todd Dagres is founder of Spark Capital, a venture capital firm in Boston. His Twitter stream offers perspective on tech issues like the rivalry between Google and Apple, plus thoughts on the Red Sox and rock-and-roll. Also, off-hand quips like "What does PETA say about Whack the Mole?"

- @Pistachio: Laura Fitton (pictured at right) is a speaker and consultant on social media issues, and also founder of the new start-up oneforty. She's also author of the book "Twitter for Dummies," and has 35,000+ followers on Twitter. Tweets range from reflections on motherhood to pledges to do more surfing (the kind that involves water) to a presentation about negotiation: "Negotiation takeaways: ask for the moon+stars, then shut up. Give little info. Don't introduce emotion. Have a good poker face."

- @Michael_Gilman: One of the few executive Twitterers from the realm of Boston biotech. Gilman is founder and CEO of Stromedix, and former SVP of research at Biogen Idec. Crams a lot of thought, and interesting links, into 140 characters: "Need more evidence of what's wrong with our health care system? Donating a kidney gives you a 'preexisting condition.' http://ow.ly/hbTt"

- @leaddog99: John Landry is a former CTO at Lotus and tech advisor to IBM's chief executive, now an angel investor, entrepreneur, and raconteur. Likely to tweet about the first music video made with an iPhone video camera, the IPO of one of his investments, or a Dean Kamen keynote speech.

- @BobMetcalfe is the founder of 3Com Corp., inventor of Ethernet, and now an investor at Polaris Venture Partners focusing on tech and cleantech. Tweets sometimes focus on Metcalfe's bike riding up and down the coast of Maine -- but also take you to Facebook HQ and a scientific conclave at Google.

There are lots more folks from the Boston/Massachusetts/New England innovation economy who are worth following, of course. (I follow just over 100 people, most of them in the region.) Who's tops on your Twitter list? Add 'em in the comments...

E-mail this article

Invalid E-mail address
Invalid E-mail address

Sending your article

6 comments so far...
  1. From the advertising, marketing and social media world: @edwardboches @miketrap @stevegarfield
    And, from the plugged in college crowd: @goodgrlgoneblog

    Posted by Jeff Janer August 7, 09 08:22 AM
  1. @dondodge - startups, technology, innovation, life & the Universe
    @gregjarboe - the Sultan of Search-optimized PR and author of "YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day"
    @dmscott - David Meerman Scott, Web marketing guru
    @MichaelKolowich - documentary filmmaker, NE's video storyteller
    @joe_roy aka Mr. Clarity - helping clear up people's obtuse writing, one blog post at a time
    (Disclosure: all are my colleagues)

    Posted by Janice L. Brown August 7, 09 09:27 AM
  1. It is hard to choose only a few, but I'll add three that top my list:
    * @danb -- as he says "one of the VisiCalc guys". Dan knows everyone and they know him. Lots of great RT and @'ing going on from Dan and his network.

    * @pattyinboothbay -- Quick updates on what's going on on her blog. Patty is queen of customer driven innovation, 'nuff said.

    * @skap5 -- Close to Boston in Providence, Saul has done an amazing job taking an idea on fostering more innovation in the state and turning it into "a top 7 place to watch great minds" (by Mashable).

    Posted by Jana Eggers August 7, 09 01:25 PM
  1. I follow Boston high tech innovation in the enterprise software space. My top tweeters are:

    @ScottKirsner: Not pandering at all, Scott has one of the best local Twitter streams about Massachusetts innovation.

    @mike_feinstein: Local VC insights, entrepreneurship, etc. I especially like his blog.

    @michaelgaiss: VP of marketing at Highland Capital (disclosure: Highland is an investor in my company, StreamBase), but he has a good pulse on innovation in the area, cool companies, local events, etc.

    @jeggers: CEO of a t-shirt company that's pretty cool. Fun to read about an innovative company in an entirely different area from software

    @bmichelson: Brenda is for software geeks in the enterprise software space, one of the best analysts in that area. And, yes, I know, I'm breaking the rules - she's in Maine :)

    @hireminds: David Hayes just started using Twitter, but he's a great source of who's hiring in Massachusetts - very connected.

    @tibbetts: Richard Tibbetts is the CTO of my company StreamBase, and tweets about really cool technical topics (language, CEP, etc.), and some fun stuff

    - Mark Palmer (@mrkwpalmer)


    Posted by Mark Palmer August 7, 09 05:56 PM
  1. @thefitkitchen 10 minute workouts and 10 minute meals
    @jasonazizms Health educator

    Posted by James Lazlo August 9, 09 06:35 PM
  1. @stevesarsfield Advice on managing enterprise sofware initiatives
    @joeunni Regular guy trying to make it as an artist/woodworker in Boston

    Posted by Bill Brady September 12, 09 11:11 PM
 

Introducing...

BetaBoston technology news logo
Innovation and technology news that matters, on a new website from the Boston Globe, featuring Scott Kirsner and other original reporting.
More...

About Scott Kirsner

Scott Kirsner was part of the team that launched Boston.com in 1995, and has been writing a column for the Globe since 2000. His work has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Newsweek, and Variety. Scott is also the author of the books "Fans, Friends & Followers" and "Inventing the Movies," was the editor of "The Convergence Guide: Life Sciences in New England," and was a contributor to "The Good City: Writers Explore 21st Century Boston." Scott also helps organize several local events on entrepreneurship, including the Nantucket Conference and Future Forward. Here's some background on how Scott decides what to cover, and how to pitch him a story idea.

On Facebook

Subscribe via e-mail

Get Innovation Economy updates via e-mail. Enter your address and click 'Subscribe':

More from Scott

Events

March 3: Web Innovators Group
Demos, drinks, and schmoozing at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge.

March 7-8: MassDigi Game Challenge
Competition for aspiring game developers... plus panels and keynotes related to the business of play.

April 3-4: Mass Biotech Annual Meeting
Issues facing the region's life sciences community.

archives
http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2009/08/the_friday_five_boston_twitter.html
archive.boston.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2016-36
70207
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:55KMXMYB3AJQMTTLJOID5Q7X2MID4EVR
<urn:uuid:f4987025-dc20-42da-a7f5-ccc54b9f38d0>
2016-08-24T23:44:42Z
66.151.183.57
sha1:7CL7T6CPML3ZNK47LNXO5Q6UVPWJKZZB
<urn:uuid:13dd20b5-addc-40bc-888b-e5f26fdf225f>
http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2009/08/the_friday_five_boston_twitter.html
response
<urn:uuid:0bd16e12-d4c2-4be2-ace0-2b3975f60ad4>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-153-172-175.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2016-36
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for August 2016
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf