Joanna D’angelo (@JoannaDangelo) is a film and television writer. She’s also a novelist and a blogger. Joanna founded the Love Romance Novels Twitter group and also writes for the Pop Culture Divas blog. Listen in to find out how writers on Twitter find each other using Twibes.

Joanna D’Angelo: Hello, Joanna speaking.

Adam Loving:

Hi, Joanna. This is Adam from Twibes. How’s it going?

Joanna:

Hi, Adam. How are you?

Adam:

Pretty good. Hopefully, you were expecting my call.

Joanna:

Yes, I am.

Adam:

Excellent. Great. Well, I’ve got PopCultureDivas.com up on my web browser here.

Joanna:

Great.

Adam:

This is your website?

Joanna:

Yes, that’s my blog.

Adam:

Cool. I’ve been talking to a few different Twibe founders today, and I have to say I was pretty excited to talk to you as a founder of the Love Romance Twibe.

Joanna:

Great.

Adam:

A little less dry than say sales and marketing, you know what I mean?

Joanna:

Sorry?

Adam:

It’s a less dry topic than sales and marketing on the Internet or something like that.

Joanna:

Oh, right. More fun.

Adam:

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, and your blog, and what you do?

Joanna:

Well, I’m a writer. My background is in film and television. I’m also working on my first novel. I did a documentary that came out in 2007 called "Who’s Afraid of Happy Endings?" It basically looks at the world of romance writers.
I followed three romance writers throughout that. They were each at different points in their career. One was an aspiring author, and two were more established, but they were looking to break into other terrain.

I interviewed other authors, best-selling authors, editors, and agents. It looked at the culture of the romance world and some of stereotypes. It was for Bravo! Canada. It’s also been broadcast in Australia.

Adam:

Fantastic.

Joanna:

That grew into the Facebook group called Love Romance Novels. Then when I went on to Twitter and discovered Twibes, I thought why not do a Twitter/Twibe version of Love Romance Novels?

Adam:

The book that you’re currently writing, can you tell us what that’s about at all?

Joanna:

Yes. Well, it’s a work in progress. I just started it, and I don’t quite know what it’s going to become and where it’s headed. It’s going to be a romance novel hopefully. I’m just getting my feet wet.
That’s not really the main focus of what I do right now. I’m hoping to get into it. I work more in television in developing lifestyle and reality shows, and all that kind of good stuff.

Adam:

Right. Always got to have the side project, I suppose.

Joanna:

Writers always have side projects, right?

Adam:

Exactly.

Joanna:

Working on a book – I mean, who isn’t working on a book? Tell me when it’s published. Then it’ll mean something.

Adam:

I don’t know. Us computer programmers are kind of the same way. There’s always one more idea that I’m working on.

Joanna:

I’m sure. It’s this crossroads of technology and creativity in terms of what you do, right?

Adam:

Right. Sociology, sometimes.

Joanna:

Yes.

Adam:

Do you think that your Love Romance Novels Twibe carried over a lot of users from your existing community?

Joanna:

It’s starting to. The Facebook group is really big. It’s the largest romance fiction group on Facebook. It’s got almost 2400 members.

Adam:

Wow.

Joanna:

That’s quite big for… There are a lot of romance fiction groups. I’m proud of the fact that we stand out that way, and I work really hard on it.
I think Twitter is really growing in terms of accessibility and function for the romance community. I think more and more romance writers and readers are getting on board.

In the last few months since I’ve joined, I’ve seen a huge flowering, actually, of writers coming on board. I’m always encouraging people to join Twitter as a nice complement to Facebook.

The Twibes group I find is great because I find that a lot of people don’t get the concept of following. If someone’s who like-minded and is in the same line of work – I guess people see Twitter for different reasons.

As writers, you’re always looking to promote yourself, right?

Adam:

Right.

Joanna:

If someone who’s a writer or works in the same area that you work follows you, then you would hope that they follow you back. That doesn’t always happen, but the great thing about the Twibes group is if you join the group, then if you post to the group, you don’t necessarily have to have them follow you for them to get your messages.

Adam:

Right, right.

Joanna:

So, I think that that’s a bonus with the group. I post that notice from time to time. I think people like that because some people see Twitter more as they just want to tweet with their friends. They don’t necessarily want to be part of a larger group. Only on occasion do they want to take part in the larger community.
The other thing that I like is that it’s like more-focused chat. So, if people are on, you can know what people are saying is all romance-related as opposed to talking about walking their dog where you have to sift through or do searches.

Adam:

I hate when I spend mental energy trying to decipher a tweet, and then I discover it’s something I didn’t care about, trying to read these short little messages.

Joanna:

Yes. How is Twibes going for you? Is it…

Adam:

It’s going really, really well. What I wanted to do is do some interviews with people to see what the common threads are with the Twibes that are doing the best because it is a very small percentage of Twibes that actually are the most successful.
There are probably over 20,000 Twibes, and I’m sure 99 percent of people are active in maybe 100 Twibes, well, actually, from a look at my data, at least maybe 200 Twibes.

One challenge is that people ask me, "How do I make my Twibe bigger? How do I get more people in it?" The other challenge is how do we keep people coming back to the Twibe page.

A lot of people use it just as a networking tool where they really probably only care about the list of people, and then they’ll go off and communicate with them on Twitter.

Really, there’s value in that Twitter tweets on the Twibe page like you were mentioning, and it’s just a question of how I would make that more useful so that it actually serves a function.

Joanna:

We recently did a chat on Twitter called "Ask Romance Writer." It was a 24-hour chat, and it was unbelievable. We had just a huge turnout and a constant flow of comments and commentary by romance writers, readers, aspiring writers, editors, et cetera. And I’m thinking that we want to make it as an annual thing and then I’m thinking well, maybe for the next one it might be a cool idea to do it on the Twibe page.
But, it’s kind of an iffy thing because then you’re having to add people. Once they’re on Twitter to then going to Twibes as well. I mean it’s very simple to do, but people feel kind of inundated and they go, "Oh, yet another application. Yet another thing I’ve got to sign up for."

Adam:

Yeah, I see the email come in all day long because I also do the support for the site. So, it’s always a couple of emails that come in everyday saying, "I don’t understand how to join. I’m signed up on Twitter, but what do I need to do for this extra Twibes thing?" So, I definitely commiserate with that.

Joanna:

You’re still on Twitter but it’s just like another more streamlined application. So, what I’m trying to do is just encourage people to join as much I can throughout. So, we’ll check in again and see because I promoted the event through Twibes as well.
As I said, not everyone who joined my Twibe group is following me. So, that was nice because I was able to promote it there. So, I’m thinking I’ll just keep promoting the romance community to join the Twibe and then if I see that we have 500 members, then that’s a really good number to do a chat, I think. So hopefully, we’ll be able to do it there next year. That way people can post directly onto the Twibe page; they don’t have to keep refreshing. That kind of stuff drives me crazy.

Everybody can go to one place and it’s just nice. So, any other bells and whistles Twibes is going to offer us? [laughs]

Adam:

Well, probably in the real short term here, we’ll have some kind of JavaScript widgets so that you can actually take the Twibe with the pictures of the people and the Tweets and put that on your blog or on a page of your blog somewhere.

Joanna:

Oh, that’s cool.

Adam:

It’s just one more tie-in, things you can use to promote your own URL to your own blog without having to explain Twibes to people. I mean, they may have to come to Twibes to join at some point, but I’m excited to get that done. I’m working on it.
And then I’m trying to do some work on the email notifications, for example. They’re not terribly useful and they’re kind of annoying right now, where if I might send them too frequently without enough information, people might turn them off. But, if I send them too infrequently then they’re not really helpful. I’m trying to make those as useful as possible.

So, ideally, that would be an email every couple of days with the Tweets from your Twibe.

Joanna:

I actually do find it useful. I don’t mind. How often do you send them out now?

Adam:

It’s about once every week and a half to two weeks.

Joanna:

Yeah, that’s fine. Every two weeks I think is fine. I mean I think that’s actually a nice thing, a nice service that you provide, to kind of keep reminding. The other thing I find is – so are you providing a way for us to click directly on Twibes from our Twitter page?

Adam:

There’s no real way I can do that or that I have control over that. There’s some different hackish ways like setting up a search. We can attach a robot to Twibe, which I notice we don’t have on yours. But, some of the Twibes we have a Twitter account that just retweets everything that gets posted to the Twibe. That’s one way that at least the Twibe Tweets are showing up more often in your Twitter stream and everybody can follow that.
And then we’ve been lobbying Twitter to include us in that little box in the upper right corner of your home page so at least there’s an advertisement for Twibes. But there’s no real direct way.

Joanna:

Well, so far that seems to be the case with every sort of off-shoot application. You just have to be signed into Twitter and then you have to log on to the other by basically going to the URL and doing it that way.

Adam:

Do you have a favorite Twitter client or do you use any of the phone apps or anything like that?

Joanna:

No, I don’t. I Twitter from my computer. I find that I can’t… I mean if I Twittered from my phone too I would always be on Twitter. Already I’m on quite a bit.

Adam:

I hear you.

Joanna:

I try to space it out to the morning and nights, basically when I’m just checking my email and I add email, Facebook, Twitter. I do it all at once. But sometimes I pop on during the day. [laughs] It depends on the day of the week. If I’m at home and writing, I’ll just have a writer’s block: Oh, what’s going on in Twitter?
I think that that’s the great thing about Twitter and Twibes, is that you can post your blog links and all kinds of stuff. I mean that really kind of spreads the word about your other work so I think it’s a great way to disseminate information and it’s just so popular, Twitter, now.

When you think about the social networking sites that are out there, and there are so many – well, I mean it’s basically Facebook and Twitter that are huge. I know that there are different ones that offer things that are slightly different, like Digg and other sites. MySpace, for example, I’m not really a fan of. I find that the layout is kind of dirty and messy and convoluted and it just doesn’t appeal to me.

I had a MySpace page for one day and then I took it down. I just didn’t like it. But, Facebook and Twitter I think are just the cat’s meow. I just love them.

Adam:

Cool. Well, any other…

Joanna:

Well, I hope I’ve been helpful to you!

Adam:

Yeah, this has been very helpful. Do you have any other complaints or gripes or anything that you’ve been waiting or wishing for from Twibes?

Joanna:

No, I like when people join, there’s that instant message that goes out. I think that’s good. I mean it’s kind of growing on its own now, which is great. I haven’t been – hello?

Adam:

Yeah, I’m still here.

Joanna:

Sorry. I haven’t been nursing it too much and it’s doubled since I last really put a big effort into it. So, I was like, "Hey, great." It’s kind of taken a life of its own, which is what you want with these groups. You want people to just kind of take over and make it their own.
So, I think it’s the biggest romance fiction group on Twibes.

Adam:

Yeah. I may not recognize some of the names but definitely this is the one that keeps popping up.

Joanna:

Yeah, I think it is, which is also another feather in my cap, I guess. So that’s good. I mean I’m very happy. Hopefully, it will just keep growing and it will sort of be a nice complement to the Facebook group and what I do with my blog and just kind of promoting the wonderful world of romance fiction and the smart ladies who write it. And there you go!

Adam:

Fantastic. Fantastic. Well thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me.

Joanna:

Thanks a lot Adam, good luck.

Adam:

Talk to you soon, bye.

Joanna:

Bye.