Quantcast


Jun 07 2009

ReTweet Tweet Tweet – We Are What We Tweet: What Value Are You Giving Your Following?

"If I ReTweet myself, then I ReTweet myself. I am large. I contain multitudes."
–  WWhitman adapted from Song of Myself

Seems like a good bit of Twitter is stuff like this:

picture 28 ReTweet Tweet Tweet   We Are What We Tweet: What Value Are You Giving Your Following?

and stuff like this:

picture 29 ReTweet Tweet Tweet   We Are What We Tweet: What Value Are You Giving Your Following?

and Mr. 50k (now nearing 100k) generates a heck of a lot of tweets that look like this:

picture 32 ReTweet Tweet Tweet   We Are What We Tweet: What Value Are You Giving Your Following?

There's no questions that he's tweeting. And He's generated A LOT of tweets in his historical rise to non-fame.

picture 311 ReTweet Tweet Tweet   We Are What We Tweet: What Value Are You Giving Your Following?

But much of it is little more than chatter, like the folks in the grocery store on their bluetooth headsets that talk to their disembodied friends through out their entire shopping spree. There's not much to the conversation. And the appearance is fairly goofy, especially if they like to gesture with their hands… But the conversation looks  similar to the tweets above. Chatter for chatter's sake.

[Wait a sec, "Husky pants for adults?" Now that's funny. Would I follow the guy? No. But he occasionally shows a blip of humor throughout his meteoric 14,000+ tweets.]

Let's do the math on this for a second.

picture 33 ReTweet Tweet Tweet   We Are What We Tweet: What Value Are You Giving Your Following?

That's only 24 tweets a day, 7/24. So not un-reasonable. But check out Mr. 50k's tweetcloud:

picture 34 ReTweet Tweet Tweet   We Are What We Tweet: What Value Are You Giving Your Following?

Id's say that's pretty much a tweet content value of ZERO.

Perhaps I need to do a bit of work on my content as well:

picture 35 ReTweet Tweet Tweet   We Are What We Tweet: What Value Are You Giving Your Following?

But at least I have a few more words to work with.

So last observation:

The top image is a friend who is working to work Twitter as a business. To him, Twitter is an RSS feed that's easier to explain to people. Feed everything through it, derive benefit from the followers actions.

The 2nd image is from Whurley. No harm in referring to your self as an evil genius, over and over and over again. And no harm in self-promoting a bit via your Tweets. [We all do this.] But if your primary contribution to the twitterverse looks like a self-selected "genius" promo, well… ]

The 3rd image is from Mr. 50k. Who in dialogue via twitter admitted that he Auto-DMs people so that he can communicate with them better. When I asked him why he didn't at least visit the person's Twitter page and see if he had any connection whatsoever with the person, he responded, "When you get over 100 new followers a day, you see if you have time to contact each one of them directly."

In a rather amazing turning of social media on it's ear, Mr. 50k called me after I had been tweaking his ear for a week to stop "gaming" Twitter. He asked me to stop. We had a nice chat. "You can't believe what kinds of opportunities this number of followers gives me."

Uh, yes, actually I can. What I still wonder, is what kind of value you can possibly give to your followers in 736 tweets per month. And if it's just chatter, WOW that is a lot of wasted energy for all parties concerned.

I will leave you with the actual WWhitman quote.

"If I contradict myself, then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes."

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/tweet-tweet

A few related posts:

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Mar 29 2009

Pay-to-Play Twitter – the Twitter Problem (UPDATE 3-29-09)

Category: community building,social media,speed the web,tech opinion,toolsjmacofearth @ 7:51 am

Who determines what's gaming the system? Does Mr. 50k, who AUTO-BOTS everyone and everything get kudos or crickets? Who decides which API calls get white-listed and which get black-listed? Who decides how many Twitter calls is enough? Who throttles the system for the commercial accounts vs. the free ones?

As with Google when a company controls too much of the communications space they have an opportunity to "do evil."

So Twitter did a parnership with Microsoft (speak of the devil) to see if the ExecTweets model had legs or more importantly, gold coins. Well, I'd say they are foil wrapped coins if you ask me. [Oh and Federated Media is gonna do the advertising model for them as well.] Getting in bed with MS is sure to hasten your demise not improve your street cred. But then again, turning down a half-billion dollar offer from Facebook is pretty ballsy.

But what's a Tweeter to do? Is it time to pay the tweet-keeper? Are there "premium" features that Twitter can think up that the Twitter-App community hasn't? Okay, so even if they can't, they can squeeze off the target app and build it for themselves and charge money for it. Right?

Okay, so why does this sound so much like the debate over pay-for-quality-bandwidth issue in the internet infrastructure space? Because it's the same thing.

Does Twitter and Biz Stone and Co. OWN Twitter and the Twitter API? Yes. Is the Twitter API so important that we'd all be willing to pay to play on Twitter's fail-prone network? [Trick question. But would it improve the service?]

At the moment, Twitter is the only way to get your Tweetoff. But it cannot stay that way for long. What do you suppose Google thinks about being left out of the MS-Twitter revenue sharing model? I'd bet Jaiku is still bitter on their tongues and I'd bet when the "system" is ready they will offer a "TWEET-OPEN" format or "TWEE-CONNECT." It does not matter what they call it.

Twitter is a network and a protocol for 140 character messages. Not too unique in the world of internet communications. Facebook offers more characters, and keeps f-ing up their web pages, but they have 10x the users. That's right. Facebook makes "Twitter" our favorite champion of the innovative, new frontier to the uninitiated, gaming platform for the greedy… Facebook makes Twitter look like a minnow to Moby Dick.

So it won't be long. Mark the date. Twitter and MS get in bed together. Days, weeks, later Google or Facebook releases the FREE-and-EASY network API for Tweeters ready to UPGRADE their service to servers that don't have a Fail Whale joke attached to them. Oh, and don't expect the Twitter-App Innovators to sit by and watch TweetiePie get all the gold coins.

Check out Jively, a single developers attempt at building a new Twitter. [Like Twitter but better.] Or Yammer.

So MicroTweet, TwitterSoft, TwitterLIVE. ExecTwitter sounds like a Twitterjoker.com concept if I've ever seen one. Not as good as the e-Penis joke I saw today.

If we are waiting for Microsoft to be innovative in the communications space and Twitter to get a clue about how to make money, we might examine our own navels and ask what we are willing to pay for what's FREE. And when it is still FREE somewhere else, how long will we pay for what we have?

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/pay2play

UPDATE 3-29-09
[Here is a copy and paste of an short post my Marc Canter, the champion of Open Mesh and Open Social. He takes on the Twitter Problem I address above.]
Decentralized Twitter’s time has come
Its great to see others like Dave Winer start to realize that Twitter has too much power in one vendor’s pocket and that it’s time to decentralize the whole notion of Twitter.

This is exactly why I resisted to signing up to Twitter in the first place and why I’ve continued to complain about relying upon a centralized service at all. [1], [2], [3], [4]

That’s why God (or whomever) invented DNS.  If we are to rely upon Twitter as infrastructure – it better sure as hell be decentralized!

Now how do you do that – and let other vendors in on it?

I’m sure that’s the last thing Evan Williams and Fred Wilson wanna see happen – but their lack of understanding the nuances and issues here – kind of are forcing the point.

Look – it’s not that Twitter is totally coolio.  But we need 100 Twitters.  That’s what I said before and why I’ll keep saying it.

Distributed decentralized Twitter = YES

– Marc Canter, May 4, 2008

+++

Related Posts:


Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Mar 16 2009

#SXSW Social Media and Sustainability Meltdown #SMFS – Can We Agree?

Reduce Reuse Recycle RE-Tweet

"Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, ReTweet!" — JMacofearth.

"If sustainability is the goal, then social media will be an enabling technology."

sxsw 09 - green presentation - click to download

sxsw 09 - green presentation - click to download

The panel included myself and Jon Lebkowsky, Emily Gertz, and Rob Reed. And with permission I will put links to each participants presentations.

“Sustainability requires doing more with less, constantly learning how to get more out of every pound of material and watt of energy. The creation and communication of this knowledge occurs in social networks of relationships, empowered by social media. Join us for a discussion and exploration of how social media are being used to accelerate our transition to a global sustainable culture."

Emily Gertz got the best response when she asked, "Where are the LOL cats of sustainability?"

Hot Topic of the Discussion Greenwashing:
The practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly, such as by presenting cost cuts as reductions in use of resources. Examples: FLEX Ready designation of Suburbans and Hummers, Clorox's Green Products are not in recyclable bottles, Margarine was better for you until they found out it was badder for you.

Some of the tweets during the sesson:

  • #SMFS Gertz saving the convo here.
  • We're not going to solve our problems by stopping progress. Innovation is key #smfs
  • #SMFS The influencers are in this room, how can we take it outside these walls…..
  • RT @misswinnie: this panel is terrible! your audience wants you to address the issues, #smfs [interesting point, but there are more views
  • RT @smaclovin: #smfs political tools please, such a charged political issue how can we encourage Political action in a real way? [please]
  • RT MaryAnneDavisCan we lose the harsh and focus on what's working, #smfs each and every day? Of course we can
  • Sustainability needs to respect the environment, yet the business models that support it need to be sustainable too.
  • greenwashing products is like margarine. everyone will think it is ok to use these products until they screw everything up.
  • "You preach to the choir and the choir converts the congregation." #sxsw #smfs
  • Really enjoying the differing opinions & ideas about sustainability #SMFS #sxsw09
  • #smfs Real solutions, real projects, open standards
  • @engagejoe is laying down some AWESOME ideas for social media-based climate change projects in the #sxsw #smfs session
  • RT: smaclovin: peeps in for more convo meet outside room and smile big so we know who you are #smfs
  • RT @aplyley Social media for sustainability panel pretty contentious. No surprise. Subject inspires lots of passionate opinions. #smfs
  • @misswinnie #smfs Its up to us to clear the air of this … stay strong! *LV

The Links Mentioned in the session:

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/sxsw-smfs

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Mar 15 2009

#SXSW TODAY 3-16: Sustainability and Social Media at #SXSW Interactive 09

seemespeak150x60 #SXSW TODAY 3 16: Sustainability and Social Media at #SXSW Interactive 09

"If sustainability is the goal, then social media will be an enabling technology."

sxsw 09 - green presentation - click to download

sxsw 09 - green presentation - click to download

If you only see only one panel at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference it's gotta be Social Media to Accelerate Sustainability Monday at 3:30 pm in Room 8. I will be joining Jon Lebkowsky, Emily Gertz, and Rob Reed in this timely discussion. I will be representing my company Clear Green Technologies and giving an initial look at the GreenLight product, a catalyst for changing our awareness of our personal energy use.

“Sustainability requires doing more with less, constantly learning how to get more out of every pound of material and watt of energy. The creation and communication of this knowledge occurs in social networks of relationships, empowered by social media.

Join us for a discussion and exploration of how social media are being used to accelerate our transition to a global sustainable culture.”We do some of our best work when we’re constrained: by budgets, by headcount, by technology, by the economy. These are the times when bureaucracy and waste die by necessity. What’s left are ideas, and the muscle to make them real. 2009 will be a tough year in many ways, but now more than ever, the core concepts of Web 2.0 provide an advantage. Lightweight tools, user interfaces, and development models will help streamline productivity and focus resources; new business models will emerge out of the environment of change.

The technologies driving social media are at the heart of today’s change movement.
From electing Barack Obama President to his appointment of Van Jones as Special Advisor for Green Jobs and the countless small gains being made across the social web, we have a greater say in how government and business operates. If sustainability is the end, then social media will be a means.

Hope to see you there.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/sxsw-green

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Next Page »


social media innovation group

future posts

A Collaborative Space: WebEx, Go-To-Meeting, Skype, Basecamp (Teaming/Meeting Tools)
Twitter Problem: How do you find enough interesting people to follow? Then how do you keep up with them?
The Agile Mind: Construction, Evolution, Care, and Feeding Instructions for Mental Flexibility

Add to Technorati Favorites

Blogged Blog Directory

Austin Interactive Marketing Association

jmacofearth's socialmedia dashboard via AllTop

99, near perfect hubspot ranking