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Mar 08 2010

Rockin the Tweets: Twitter Tools, Twitter Lists, Stats, Discovery #Twitter

Category: code is poetry,community building,connections,how do i?,lifestreaming,social media,tools — jmacofearth @ 8:13 am

Screen shot 2010 03 06 at 4.08.06 PM Rockin the Tweets: Twitter Tools, Twitter Lists, Stats, Discovery #TwitterSo all the BUZZ around Google Buzz seems to be around simplicity and not having too many followers or having too much noise due to those followers. Here's something I want to let you know. It's not the tool (twitter vs buzz vs facebook) it's how you manage it. So here's a few ideas I'd like to share around managing your social media status-sphere. It really doesn't matter if you are trending towards Buzz over Twitter. What matters is how you use it.

First up: Twitter Lists.

What are they? Why you need 'm. And why your Tweetdeck or Hootsuite lists are different.

Here is my page of Twitter list links: http://uber.la/tools/twitter-lists

So what I would like to ask you, as you are starting to re-frame your social media accounts is this, "If I can't add you to one of my Twitter lists I probably shouldn't be following you in the first place."

There is a 500 tweep limit for Twitter lists. So beyond that you will have to create 2nd and 3rd lists to keep your "austin friends"  together in your lists. You will notice I have an "austin friends" and an "austin friends 2" lists. This is not an indication of favoratism, but merely a reaching of the Twitter List 500 tweep maximum. I suspect I will be giving up my "tennis" list or my "cats and dogs" list in the future to build an "austin friends 3" list. But not today. (grin)

RULE of TWITTER ADDITION: before you click "follow" figure out what list you are going to add someone to and then do both. 1. Follow; 2. Add To List.

RULE of TWITTER SUBTRACTION: if you are following someone and you can't put them on a list, perhaps you should consider unfollowing them. 1. Examine who you follow; 2. Add all "friends" to a list; 3. UF, unfollow everyone you cannot place on one of your lists. (Why were you following them in the first place?)

Next: Twitter Tools

Fact: You can't manage Twitter on Twitter.com. You need tools. Aside from the Twitter Tools Matrix, here is the shortlist for Twitter clients I recomend.

1. Tweetdeck; 2. Seesmic; 3. Hootsuite. And more recently, a Mac-only favorite is Nambu.

Next: Twitter Stats and Analytics

While following and being followed in Twitterville is interesting, almost as interesting and potentially more valuable is the tools that allow you to see what people are tweeting about. Example: during the SuperBowl 2010 the hashtags #nfl and #superbowl and #superbowlads were quite popular with tweeters who were rating the advertisements that were paying over a million dollars per 30 sec. slot. So if your ad didn't "trend" within these hashtags you can bet the audience mostly ignored it, or forgot about it. And there were a number of unremarkable ads.

TERM: "Trending." When something is trending on Twitter it means the Tweet volume is so large that it is showing up as one of the top twenty most frequent words being tweeted.

So what tools are my most used when looking at Twitter trends? Here are my top Twitter stats and analytics tools.

1. TwitterVenn (making Venn diagrams out of trends is fun and easy); 2. TwitterFall (a visual browser for seeing hashtags and searches) ; 3. Twitter Trends Map (see the topics that are trending worldwide);

Finally: Twitter Discovery Tools

Finding new people to follow, new trends to track and new hashtags to search for is all part of the beauty of Twitter.

1. Mr. Tweet (who you follow and who they recommend); 2. FriendorFollow (are they following you back?); 3. NearbyTweets (how's close to you and tweeting?); 4. Twittoria (information about your flock)

Take the time to add value to your Tweets. Don't just follow to gain followers. If you can't put them on a Twitter List, don't follow them. Lists will become the new marker of Twitter Authority.

No, you can't ask me to add you to a list. I must discover you and add you manually. Yes, you can ask me, but I'm likely to… consider it first.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/rule-twitter

See also:

Finally an amazing image of some of the visualization tools linked off of VisualComplexity.

Explaining complex ideas with images and maps

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Feb 27 2010

Sacrificing Twitter for the Greater Good: Signal-to-Noise Improves (Update v1 3-1-10)

Category: community building,connections,how do i?,social media,speed the web,tech opinion,tech reviews,tools — jmacofearth @ 7:43 am
dropping followers like hot potatoes with managetwitter

managetwitter.com: we gain some we lose more.

Update 3-1-10: It appears I'm losing about 10 followers a day on average, as the tweeps catch up to the fact that they themselves have been unfollowed. (new chart at bottom of page)

I've done it again. Right here, just weeks before the announcement of the Texas Social Media Awards and the start of SXSW I've gone an unfollowed over 4k followees on Twitter. I am sure the affect on my followers will be quite dramatic as well. So here's why I did it.

1. Life is too short to be trying to read everything.
2. Everyone is so stoked about BUZZ because they get to be selective about who they choose to include. (Duh, how'd we get so over-followed in the first place.
3. Discovery is the biggest rush with social media, so if I unfollow a ton of folks I get to rediscover them again! wOOt!
4. I believe who you follow is as important as who follows you.
5. Good Twitter tools are hard to find.
6. All the folks I unfollowed were probably auto-dm bots anyway.
7. I probably do not deserve the number of followers I have. (Well, that one's a bit tongue-in-cheek, but…)
8. Take a bold action. None of this unfollowing by the 20-per-page, as Twitter.com (hell) would have it.

So what is going to happen from here? Oh my, all the people who are concerned about who's following and who's not following will start dropping me in huge waves. Thus my ranking, my status on the Twitterholic in Austin list is going to plummet like a rock. And I will drop back into the goop from whence I came.

Then something remarkable is going to happen. I am going to discover some new cool people to follow. Some of whom I have not followed in months. Some of whom I've never followed. And some of whom I've followed, unfollowed and followed again.

And that's the fun of it.

Here's a comparison of my followers vs. followees as reported by twittercounter.com.

resetting my followers on twitter using twittercounter

All that said, I hope you stick around. I hope you tweet good stuff. And I hope we continue to enjoy the conversation.

But I will understand if you UFM. As a close friend said recently, "I tried to follow you, but you are insane. Half the time I have no idea what you are talking about. It just made me feel confused and dumb."

I hope that's not the affect my range of tweets has on you, but I do understand if it does. I do.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/sacrificing-twitter

I hope you can find a lot of great reasons to follow me, and my rants on Twitter and about Twitter. Here's my little collection called The Twitter Way.

And I'm also putting together a list of TwitterTools, the one's I know and love. I call this the TwitterMatrix.

This massively coordinated unfollowing was powered by ManageTwitter.com. Bless them for developing a new tool to manage our accounts at more than 20 peeps per page, like Twitter.com. Now we can get some unfollowing done, by golly!

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Here's the newest chart as of 3-1-10. I have changed the scale to be only 1 month, to show more clearly the pattern as my followers begin to drop off, primarily because I have unfollowed, not because I am tweeting differently, or doing anything spammy. It's just a fact, if you unfollow me I'm likely to unfollow you. If I'm paying attention, that is. And if I care.

My chart of follower loss since the purge.

nearing 7k followers again - my twittercounter stats

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Aug 24 2009

Culling the Spammers from My Twitter Followers: TwitBlock.org Rocks!

Category: lifestreaming,social media,speed the web,tech opinion,tools,trust & reputation — jmacofearth @ 4:44 pm

Screen shot 2009-08-24 at 3.55.45 PM

Days later the trend continues.

Screen shot 2009-08-26 at 3.04.53 PM

I think I'm beginning to like this. Deleting spammy followers hurts my following, but once you get the hang of it, it really is fun knocking off the quote-spammers, the check-me-out-online spammers, the SEO-spammers. Heck, I think my spammer count has gone UP because I keep mentioning spam, spam, spam, spam, wonderful spam, wonderful spam. My count above, Added since yesterday: -1. Average growth per day: -20. Oh my. I was so close to 7,100! And for what? I may sink forever in a torrent of spammy tweeters. Oh whoa is me and my flock.

From a high of 7,093 I have aggressively BLOCKED spammy followers using TwitBlock.org, my new favorite tool. [I'm not sure how I got spam listed by 9 twitblock users, but I have some suspicions. Oh well. If you're in the neighborhood and would like to "whitelist me" as not spam I'd appreciate it.]

Well, my aggressive unspam blocking has resulted in a drop in my follower count to 6,870. Seems like the Tweespammers are aggressive about unfollowing unfollowers. I say if you're gonna blast crap quote spam, MLM marketing messages and sexcam solicitations I think you should be blocked. Perhaps those folks can figure out who blocked them and block back?

Screen shot 2009-08-24 at 4.20.56 PM

No worries. Seems like the value of a tweet just got a little more easy to spot with Twitblocker. Two great things about this tool.

1. It shows all your spammy followers on one screen allowing your to unfollow a lot of people at once. And the spammers are easy to spot, believe me. Especially when they are all lined up together like a police lineup.

2. As the tool gets more users and more accounts are rated as spam, the ratings will get better and the tool will be better at pulling spammers out of your flow.

Here's a sample output as TwitBlock began scanning my followers:

Screen shot 2009-08-24 at 4.41.10 PM

You can see I have not blocked sxpanel, but I am about to block Schwartz632. It's easy to spot the spammers, but TwitBlock makes it really easy to find them all in one place.

What we need perhaps is a kick ass Tweeter list. I've been wanting to build a matrix of folks I follow in different fields. Like a verification or a seal of approval for some folks I think are awesome. Starting with my very few #FF #followfriday nominations and Mr. Tweet recommendations, I'm sure I could produce a shortlist of recommendations. That will be my next task.

In the mean time keep it clean and add your account to Twitblock.org and get blocking. The twittersphere will thank you and together we can reduce the noise.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/twitblock-inaction

NOTE: If you think I'm spammy please let me know. I'd be happy to understand how I can provide more value for you. My motto is WIIFY (what's in it for you). And an ON NO: In unfollowing so many peeps I just upset my follow/follower ratio and I can follow no more people. Gotta get out the wackin tool again. ARRRGGH!

See also The Twitter Way, the collected posts about Twitter and Doing Twitter Right

A funny post from Mashable on the Top 25 most spammy Twitter Avatar images.

Latest Twitter Posts

My favorite twittertools:

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Mar 30 2009

Twitter Acid Test – Discovery Beyond the Shiney Objects and Creative Avatars

Category: social media,speed the web,tech opinion,tools — jmacofearth @ 10:20 am

What are the critieria by which you choose to follow someone on Twitter?

I have several "shiney object" criteria that attract me to click the "follow" link.

  1. A unique or attactive image.
  2. A unique or creative title that expresses something I am interested in.
  3. A bio that contains humor, self-awareness and beauty.
  4. Names or Bios that include the following concepts: writer, poet, poetry, musician, songwriter, cat, dog, animal tweets, enterprise 2.0, rock n roll.
  5. An awesome post, great link, something that makes me laugh, something that awakens my senses, senseless beauty, epiphanies, spirit.
  6. A retweet by a contact that contains any of the above qualities.

And in the same way there are a number of tell tale signs that the potential tweeter is not my cup of tea.

  1. A salesly name, bio or tweet with topics such as: real estate, sales, increase your twitter followers, let me show you how, business propositions, deals, tips, company PR channels, b2b, b2c, "social media", expert, guru.
  2. An AutoBot Tweeter (AutoFollow and AutoDM after I have connected to them.) Cause if you're an Auto-Bot I don't really want to hear from you. There may be exceptions, and I don't unfollow simply by being refollowed, but you your gonna follow me back do it in person, not via an auto-responder-out-of-office-automaton message. I don't care how personal or happy you try to make the message, it comes across as fake. However, one word, that shows you actually looked at my profile, "nice bio" or "songwriter, eh?" is enough to make me smile. And that's what all this is about, the smile.
  3. Forgetting the smile. All business and no fun makes for unfollowed tweeps.

There was an article about happy people hanging around other happy people. And how happy folks actually attract more happy folks. And being with someone who is happy can actually make you feel better yourself. And happiness is a lot of what we are here to BE. I am all about happy. If something you tweet makes me smile, giggle, or just feel a warm fuzzy, then I'm IN.

So the discovery of new Twitter people is fun and addictive. Just as finding new friends on Facebook can keep you up late at night, Twitter "following" is no different. But when your "following" count goes above 1,000 tweeps, how do you manage?

I tell you, my criteria gets pretty honed when I am reviewing the people I follow for dead wood. I use several tools.

But the basic task is flipping back through pages (20 tweeps per screen) and unfollowing the uninspired. And for that quick list the criteria becomes much simpler. So the Occam's Razor of Twitter unfollows is this.

Does the Tweeter Follow Me?

  • IF NO. Do I recognize the tweeter? If not, they have probably not made any tweets that stick in my memory.
    • IF YES: Skip to next Tweeter.
    • IF NO: Do I still recognize my initial interest in following the Tweeter?
      • IF NO: UNFOLLOW.
      • IF YES: Keep and skip to next Tweeter.
  • IF YES. Do I recognize the Tweeter?
    • IF YES: Have they made any memorable tweets?
      • IF YES: Keep and skip to next Tweeter.
    • IF NO. Do I still recognize my initial interest in following the Tweeter?
      • IF NO: UNFOLLOW.
      • IF YES: Keep and skip to next Tweeter.

And to review, here is the Twitter Formula:

TS = FUD (Twitter Satisfaction = Following good tweeps, Unfollowing shallow tweeps, Discovering new tweeps)

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/twitter-management

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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

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