Bio: Marshall Kirkpatrick has lived in Oregon his entire life and now lives in Portland with his fiancée Mikalina and their two dogs, Camas and Sammy. He likes to figure out exciting new things to do with RSS feeds, play tennis, go for bike rides and try to beat all the other tech bloggers to the most interesting stories as often as possible. Marshall is Vice President of Content Development and Lead Writer at ReadWriteWeb.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/marshallk
URL: ReadWriteWeb and Marshall Kirkpatrick

Question: As the Lead Writer of ReadWriteWeb and before that the Lead Blogger at TechCrunch, what do you see as the role Twitter plays in the online world?

Answer: For a small but growing number of people online, Twitter is where the conversation is. It’s a constant flow of information and discussion, it’s where news breaks, where public sentiment is gauged and where personal and professional announcements are made. Being online without Twitter is quiet, lonely and less productive.

Question: What has Twitter done for you professionally? Do you use it as you research posts?

Answer: Twitter plays a big roll in paying my rent. I regularly find breaking news there that I later write about on our news blog. I also do “interviews” on Twitter, asking my circle of contacts for responses to questions that I then write up in posts. Then when I make a good post, I tell my friends on Twitter about it and if they like it then they send the link back out to their network of friends. Those are a few of the most common ways that Twitter touches my professional life.

Question: You’re also a consultant to companies trying to make the most of the new Internet: How does Twitter interact with that side of your life?

Answer: A lot of people want to know how to use Twitter, that’s something that frequently comes up in consulting sessions once I’ve convinced them that other Web 2.0 tools have clear, tangible value. Then they’re curious whether Twitter could have some value, too. No one thinks it does before they start using it. I point people towards Twellow.com where they can find Twitter users categorized by occupation. That alone makes a big difference, showing people that many Twitter users have serious jobs, or even jobs at all!

Sometimes I’ll be discussing something with a client and a question will come up that would be better asked of my whole network of people. So I ask on Twitter, usually get a bunch of replies, and the client is happy. I’m also pretty sure that Twitter has impacted the consulting part of my life by bringing me consulting clients after I tweet about work I’m doing for others.

Question: How about for the personal side of your life? From your Twitter feed, it looks like you tweet about all parts of your life, not just the professional side. How’s that working out for you?

Answer: Qwitter tells me that people unfollow me every time I tweet about my ceramics class, going for a bike ride or taking my dogs to the park! So be it - good riddance. I like to get to know people in tech as whole people and I know there are people who like to know things about me other than tech related details, too. I found an officiator for my wedding on Twitter!

Question: Any advice for web or mainstream journalists re Twitter?

Answer: Just try it. Try a desktop app, like Tweetdeck, do some searches, find some good people to follow, tweet, reply publicly, share things of interest. The possibilities are endless, but before you take the first step in a meaningful way - it all looks totally stupid. If you’re still not convinced, dear mainstream journalists, then don’t worry about it - I’ll just write faster, more informed news stories than you, using Twitter as one of my tools, and you don’t have to worry about it at all. You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it learn new skills to thrive in a changing world.

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(This is one of 12 interviews we did for The Twitter Survival Guide: enjoy!)