Is Twitter gone mad?
Twitter is a conversation tool – I consider it to be a revolution. 140 characters long messages to say it all. No bullshit, no turning around. Just plain instant thinking.
I’m a big Twitter fan – that’s no news to you. 1200 followers, 4000 tweets, 700 direct messages…impressive you think. Well no!!
Some guys decided to break the rules –yeah…I know there are no rules. Anyway Jason Calacanis decided to be #1 tweeterer and offered a free mac book Air to reach 20.000 followers. Since then Twitter has turned into a racetrack. Schumacher aka Scoble was leading for many months, Barack Obama came in and broke all the figures with over 23K follower…and no ones give a shit…
Twitter is hijacked from its primary purpose. Here we go with EgoTwitter. Mine is bigger than yours
So you can ask me the difference between my 1200 followers and that new guy who registered last week and already has 2000 followers- and the answer is: NETWORK. Like many-hopefully-we build a network over time creating an interesting noise; sharing tips; helping out. Like a relationship.But you can’t buy friends. Never worked!! Twitter is no exception.
Paul Walsh is launching a new venture and to drag new users- he uses that stupid trick: Buy the audience. It doesn’t look too good for a start- unless your business is boring… Sorry Paul !
I’m not against giving away prizes…or receiving prizes…in fact one idea will be to have a group contest where all prizes would be presented. Few mac book Air – Steve Jobs will be happy; cards; travels; phones; plasma…I think its called eBay 
But here – if you want to break Twitter and get 40K followers you can do the following. Register @HugeBoobs, upload a picture of a nice blond with prominent 00 and start twittering of your loneliness; add every single user on public time line for 3 weeks and BINGO!!I can guarantee you’ll end up in top 10 users. No give-away – just grabbing the attention.
Moderation, no moderation THAT is the question! I followed Shel Israel’s interview of Twitter founders –BTW Shel was really good on this one; Loren Feldman really saved Shel he just doesn’t know it yet. Anyway - I saw a product manager giving numbers; stats; I hate that mostly in a conversation tool. Do you do statistics about your friends? How many time they called you today? Do you rank keywords in your conversation? That’s bull…
There are 2 kinds of usage. First one I’ll call it Broadcasting Mode. Fucking annoying. I un-followed Guy Kawazaki for this reason.200 tweets per day with hyperlink.Duh!! Have you heard about RSS feeds?? What are you trying to do? The worst usage someone can do of Twitter is definitely Broadcasting. At least if you think of getting into it be very specific in your profile and avoid: “prolific blogger avid for new conversation…”.
Second is called Conversation Mode. The only interesting one. Open text message platform making an incredible noise based on sharing; debating and creating content. Everyday I find interesting stories cool links helpful tips and meet incredible people. I selected 3 service providers found on Twitter. Just like that! Twitter is delivering 5% of its potential; we can do much better if we de-pollute our timeline.
I understand they have a business to run BUT they must understand Twitter is driven by its population – not the other way around. We decide what we want it to become. No one else! If I had the audience I would prove it by launching a strike. No tweets for 4 hours to stop few egocentric guys from using OUR tool as a self-promotion platform.
I may be naïve - you’re right I can hear you- everyone is promoting himself on Twitter. Ok ok…but let’s put some efforts into it. Start a conversation. Do not buy my friendship with a laptop or a GPS! Buy it with words; trust and confidence.
You can have no rules when there is an auto regulation – Wikipedia kind of. Twitter does not have it yet! I hope they’ll get it before it looses its momentum. This is the only place where I see a failure.
PS: 2 things I want to add. Don’t ask me for lists. Black list; white list is not my cup of tea. I’d rather change people than ban people. No one deserves to be put aside. Secondly I don’t like boycotts. Something I can’t and won’t do.
Guest Post by Florian Seroussi
follow me on Twitter @florianseroussi
26 comments...What do you think?
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Twitter is cool. I only follow people who I think I might learn something from and that are up to something new and interesting. Also you get to speak to people who you never would have previously
Just because someone is in the Web 2.0 biz (whatever that is), that doesn’t mean they still don’t have the outdated view of human beings as commodities. Excellent post, great voice!
High five to a post that is dead on the mark Florian!
Pat - thanks for getting Florian to speak up and post here. We need more of this kind of conversation
Thanks @JackieDanicki Glad you liked it!
@KenCamp it’s all about conversation right?
Twitter’s great because the interaction is live. Not moderated, or captcha’d or trapped inside a walled garden.
But your argument here doesn’t bear close scrutiny. Twitter will never be broken because Calacanis and others are bribing followers to build their web 2.0 versions of the old email ‘list’.
Why? Because of ‘unfollow’. You make my point with what you say re GuyKawasaki. Twitter is your twitter - you follow who you want. It’s as spammy or as pure as you want your friends to be..
If Twitter’s broken, then society’s broken. Discuss.
Superb post. Directly from the heart. Alex- Florian is trying to say a simple thing: Keep the noise interesting. Unfollowing everyone will not bring much conversation.
Thank you for this Florian.
While I was reading this post I thought: mmm, this is not Pat…this post is too long! Good job guys.
Florian, that’s one of the smartest things I’ve ever seen written about Twitter.
The moment someone crosses the line from conversation to broadcast-only mode, I unsub them. I’ve also refused to sub to most of the so called A-listers because they generate little more than noise most of the time. And don’t get me started on the “oh I’ve left Twitter forever, oh I’m back” plonkers.
Florian, blog more. Great post.
Every system will have people trying to game it for lazier purposes, we all know Calacanis just wants the most followers so he can spam these live people about his services. That’s fair enough and others will follow suit but the majority will not and we can always unsub or block with ease.
Broadcast is lazy, lacks imagination and does not strenghten the intial weak bond to become much stronger. I really don’t care who follows me but I care a lot about the opinions and feedback from those I follow back or those that @ message me. I value that they take the time out to connect with me and give me feedback and I want to listen to what they have to say over a day and a week, you can’t dso that if you are subbed to 2k, 5k or 20k people. The value of an individual’s timeline is lost.
I want strongly bonded connections with people (but not everyone) and that means I have to make an effort and they have to make an effort back. This is how blogging works and social networks.
Great post Florian - I agree absolutely with your converse vs broadcast point
Should have said earlier thank you for the thought-provoking post Florian - certainly sparked me to think about Twitter more deeply. You should do this more often
Personally I agree the deeper conversations that can be built through Twitter are most interesting. But I think there are other issues/benefits worth considering.
Some people like being broadcast to. Whether they’re conditioned by old media formats or whether they’re simply victims of the web’s celebrity culture, some people prefer following the crowd, prefer not to talk, but to listen. Maybe that will change. Maybe not.
If you use Twitter over Gtalk and make the most of the ‘track’ function you can follow an amazing number of conversations. Twitter becomes like a news wire service. No less interesting following 2,000 as following 20, imho.
I completely agree with you Alex. The essence must be preserved. It can’t become a spamming junkyard. And having to use friendfeed or gtalk to index my timeline is quite frustating.
Shame you feel so strongly about my creation of @wubud to not only get people talking about my new venture, but to demonstrate who Twitter can be used as a great conversation tool.
I may add that having followers such as national newspaper journalists and BBC technology correspondents would demonstrate that twitter is a medium which should be embraced by traditional media.
One of my goals was achieved within a couple of hours of creating the account.
I’m not trying to buy friends and I wasn’t using stupid tricks, well, not in my opinion anyway!
All sorted out with Walshy!!
I like caring people and Paul is one of them!!
Thanks Florian - nice to see friends can be honest with each other. I’m too sensitive
Great post Florian. Question for all the folks following here - why has Twitter caught on, with some of the major weaknesses it has for conversation? You mention the difficulty of tracking conversations Florian when you follow a lot of people. And more importantly, what improvements can be made to make the tool easier to us?
Dennis, if you use ‘track’ in combination with ‘follow’ routing twitter through Gtalk - it’s very easy to see conversations. It’s also a brilliant way to discover new people having interesting conversations.
If Twitter implements track across all it’s platforms it will truly become the killer app of the naughties
The great thing about twitter is that is is flexible enough to support two very different types of relationships and allows people to fluidly change from one to the other. For example twitter performs very well as a medium between broadcaster and audience. It also performs very well as a medium between community members.
But it can take new users a bit of time to discover this.
I’m inclined to think that many new twitter users start by following broadcasters. They have probably come to twitter because they have gained a great deal from being an audience members of some the of the big bloggers. Then as they settle into the new medium that twitter is they begin to slide towards using twitter as a medium for community. Its a natural progression in the real world. We can all be as one audience to the big game but mediate new friendships in the watching and talking about the game during and after it has occured.
Twitter as a medium has a particular form that lubricates that progression from audience to community. Think about it. Of all the short, pithy, smart remarks you have enjoyed or chuckled at in your life the vast majority of them arise within light conversational chit chat and only make sense within that context. That’s a key part of the warmth and pleasure of community. Only a very few can be taken out of context a delivered to a mass audience. That’s the downside of the fact that audiences scale but communities don’t.
When new users come to Twitter from the blogosphere, they find the same familiar and cosy social objects (scoble and kawasaki) that they know and love. Except they find that in this medium they now seem kinda noisy and a little irritating. They sometimes start remarking about this to their neighbours and this is the little irritation that is often the start of driving them towards dropping a couple of lightweight pithy remarks and before you know it they are discovering the usefulness of twitter as a lightweight tool for community.
Post script: It strike me that this is something that doesn’t really happen on jaiku..a comment in a medium that allows threading consciusly or subconsiously rewards or encourages comments that prompt conversations as opposed to throwaway remarks. And that can make all the difference…
@dennis Twitter has caught on so much attention because they are the only one to provide real-time multi-channel conversation.
I don’t think we should expect Twitter to make the tool different. Its a behavior problem. Users must learn to share an open conversation without hijacking the ‘noise’.
@Niall I agree with everything you wrote!! But I cannot get to use Jaiku
Looks like someone was taking your advice - I read your suggestion about using sex to get twitter followers, then later on today I find myself being followed by a “silicon valley hooker” - as these things tend to find and follow clusters of people and I follow both Pat and yourself I’m assuming you got followed too - I didn’t include the link as I don’t think there’s any merit in promoting it.
@Stewart I read somewhere Scoble was called Twitter whore. He liked it!! Strange right…
Brilliant post. Twitter has changed…and I like what you say about depolluting it. I’m clipping down the “broadcasters,” as you call them. They gotta go. Then it gets interesting.