5 social media lessons from Roger Ebert, @EbertChicago

Screen shot of the Twitter feed of Roger Ebert, who died on Thursday at the age of 70.

It's appropriate that I first learned on Twitter of the passing of Roger Ebert. Not only because that's the place I get most of my breaking news, but also because Ebert helped me understand the power of social media and helped me teach it to others.

Here's what I posted in December 2009 when I started following Ebert on a regular basis:

Not a reader of @ebertchicago's feed, but will be after seeing electic, hilarious 12 Gifts for Christmas: http://ow.ly/LS2L

-- Sree Sreenivasan (@sree) December 14, 2009

For years, I've told people reluctant to use Twitter that @EbertChicago is a model for how to use that platform. In his last years, after a fight with cancer left him unable to speak, he used Twitter to connect to a new audience (read Mathew Ingram's (@mathewi) post in PaidContent about this). "It breaks through the silence I have been condemned to," he said. "It gives me a voice."

Here are 5 social-media lessons I learned from @EbertChicago:

1. Being interesting in real life means you can be really interesting in social ... [Read more]