Entrepreneur Mag for December includes an article here that helps put Twitter into perspective a bit more and gives “The netiquette of Twitter.”

From the Article:

“Twitter is about reaching the right people at the right time,” says Becky McCray, a longtime Twitter user and advocate who operates her own cattle ranch and liquor store as well as a website, SmallBizSurvival.com., in Oklahoma’s Woods County. “But you have to think carefully about what messages you want to communicate.” Here are some recommendations for what to do–and what not to do–on Twitter.

• Listen before speaking. “When you sign up and start reaching out to folks, listen to them before joining the conversation,” McCray says. “What are their customers talking about? Who are they listening to, and what can I learn from them? When you feel it’s time to tweet some messages, share things you find interesting–share things you wish other people would share.”

• Don’t be boring. “Make sure your tweet is interesting to the reader–be unselfish, and be useful,” says Laura Fitton, co-author of the book Twitter for Dummies and founder of the Twitter application storefront oneforty.com. Short, direct messages work best, especially given Twitter’s 140-character limit. Talk about what your business is doing–e.g., new products, services or promotions, or anything else likely to pique the curiosity of your clientele.

• Consider the source. “The beauty of Twitter is that tweets with value are almost instantly recognized,” says John Battelle, founder, chairman and CEO of Federated Media Publishing. “Does it come from somebody who’s been on Twitter for a month, or for a year? Someone with 10 followers, or 10,000 followers? Did that tweet get picked up and re-tweeted? You can tell a lot about the value of a tweet by those metrics.”

• Update daily. Give your customers a reason to follow and return to your Twitter feed. Download a mobile client to your smartphone to facilitate regular updates while on the go–some of the most popular include Twitterific, TwitterBerry, PocketTweets and Twidroid.

• Embrace Twitter applications. Don’t wait for followers to find you–identify and connect with local Twitter users via services such as Twitter Advanced Search, ChirpCity, Nearby Tweets and Tweepz. Other Twitter apps of value: SocialOomph (for scheduling tweets, tracking keywords and sending direct messages), CalTweet (for tagging, promoting and sharing upcoming business events) and Twitalyzer (for measuring the impact and influence of your tweets).

“Twitter is a tool that’s incredibly powerful,” McCray says. “What makes it powerful is the fact that it can be used in so many different ways.”

Well, there you have it straight from Entrepreneur. One day, we will all figure out Twitter and maybe, just maybe, Twitter will figure out itself!

Google Wave is a forthcoming service that appears to be quite revolutionary in communication methodology.  It is a combination of email, message boards, and instant messaging mashed together in an intuitive fashion that heightens the efficiency and, ultimately, the productivity of communication.  Watching the video and checking out the post found here at bizzia.com gives you introduction to wave.  It may become a replacement for email, especially internally and beyond as its popularity grows and competitors adopt similar concepts.  I love seeing advancement in technology, more so when it will affect entrepreneurs and you can bet new ventures will pop up utilizing such new services and offering extensions thereof, just as you’ve seen with simple services like twitter.  Cool stuff! Check the vid out below. It’s kind of long but the first 20 min. or so give you the simple idea.

I find the use of a mind map as a great tool to add to the entrepreneurial tool-belt.  It allows you to “brain-dump” in a relatively organized manner while giving you a graphical representation of idea relationships, an additional dimension to your ideas.  It is not the “ultimate” tool (one probably doesn’t exist) but one I find very useful.  It plays a stage in the planning and strategy portion of my mind and allows me to organize the “chaos” that rolls around in my head (at least a good attempt at it). I then can translate and communicate the thoughts however necessary.

I currently use a free open-source program called MindMap (see here).  It is simple, easy to navigate, easy to understand, and offers the ability to use it how you want to.  Of course, it’s also free! Which is nice, especially for the bootstrapper.  I currently use the 0.90 rc3 beta and have had no problems or glitches so far.  I then am able to translate the mind maps to business plans, strategy papers, blog posts, or simply send them anywhere as a PDF or whatever I want.

If you have any solutions that you like more, let me know!

A recent video on TED illuminates a point that a colleague and I have shared on multiple occasions, including a podcast called “My Business World”.  The new model of business productivity, often referred to as ROWE (results oriented work environment).  The concept is, essentially, to  allow employees to do whatever they want, as long as the work gets done.  Studies and experience are showing an increase in productivity and personal morale.  The intrinsic value of getting something done with the opportunity to control one’s schedule and action plans is a bigger motivator than increases in pay, bonuses or other direct reward/punishment models of the past.  It has been explored and compared to Tim Ferriss’ work with 4 hour work week here.  The big motivator appears to be the fact that people can define their “ideal” lifestyle today and not in waiting for the elusive day of retirement, all while working and being productive, contributing to the economy.

Dan (in the video) also speaks of variations of this that I find quite interesting and extremely valuable form an innovation standpoint.  Innovation is typically a matter of “captured chaotic response”, that is, in the course of living/working, we tend to stumble upon ideas, answers, problems, solutions, etc.  The process of capturing this chaos and ordering it for reproduction is innovation. Many companies, particularly in the tech industry, have implemented innovation strategies that offer a percentage of time or a day or week to work on anything you want.  Google is likely the most well known with their 80/20 rule, 20% of time is spent on any ideas outside of normal work.  This 20% has produced 50% or more of Google’s innovations as Dan tells it.  The natural chaos of individual human endeavor and thought creates substantially more innovation than the ordered workings of any company and that is seen in 80/20-like planning.

These are powerful aspects of the new motivating business model.  It is important to understand the trade-off in emphasis.  Instead of heavy focus and discipline regarding time, meetings, and such, a substantial focus and discipline must be placed on the results, and improvement of them (hence results-only work environment).  This is basically the only indicator of proper performance and further reward/punishment may exist around this metric alone.  Obviously if you are not getting the results required, you likely won’t stick around.

As a business or in defining your business, take a look at information regarding these new models and see if you can implement them for enhanced productivity and improved morale.  It may even be a cost saver as monetary reward is less necessary.  Any additional resources on these concepts? successes or failures?