Pat Phelan: Bits, bytes and telecomsMobile, Roaming and Social Media

31 comments...What do you think?

1. Posted by keith bohanna 23rd January, 2009 at 9:40 pm

   I guess I only follow people I think I might be interested in. So I follow 247 and have 302. If each of us only followed people we were actually interested in it would cut the main feed down.

   Issue then is replies and filtering those for crap. However not an issue for me at present, generally only get replies from people known to me.

   Which I suspect does not add much to your dilemma Pat

   keith

2. Posted by Evert Bopp 23rd January, 2009 at 9:42 pm

   Pat, there’s leaders and followers in Twitter. Someone like you is a leader. You generate interesting “content” for others to follow. The majority of Twitterers are followers. Do NOT follow everyone back. Only select followers by filtering on keywords to select interesting Twitterers.
   I’m not even anywhere near your league and have stopped following everyone back…

3. Posted by Paul M. Watson 23rd January, 2009 at 9:45 pm

   Your Twitter page says you follow 870 people. Are they all necessary? I follow 74 and that is already getting too much. Cull, cull, cull. Local people, *relevant* industry people, friends, not many more.

   870 follows is like 870 feeds.

4. Posted by Pat Phelan 23rd January, 2009 at 9:48 pm

   @paul
   how should I decide, a raffle, a tombola
   cut Peter, upset Paul

5. Posted by Ricky Cadden 23rd January, 2009 at 9:49 pm

   This is why I loved Jaiku – I could follow someone’s personal updates while at the same time NOT getting their various feeds. It was also less work to keep up with, since things were threaded, and I could easily weed out the fluff to participate in conversations.

   I’ve been on Twitter for the past few weeks (since Jaiku made its….announcement), and find that if I’m not using Tweetdeck, it’s simply impossible to really keep up with.

6. Posted by christopher Byrne 23rd January, 2009 at 9:56 pm

   Pat

   I dip in and out of twitter and have stopped using twhirl and use the browser so I see just snapshots. That’s good enough. I dont’t need to read everything…

   Oh and stop whining..;)

   Chris

7. Posted by ant galvin 23rd January, 2009 at 9:57 pm

   Same as Keith. I am no Twitter-must-have hovering at the 300 followers and following mark. But even I have noticed Twitter overload in the last few weeks.

   New rules I have:
   1. Don’t worry about missing stuff on Twitter. If I have the Twitter web page open/Twitterberry in use, I scan it. If it holdsmy interest fair enough. If not, off I go.
   2. Don’t feel I have to respond to every @
   3. When someone follows me, scan their profile page and make a 2 second decision on whether I should follow them. Don’t chase URLs to blogs etc…
   4. Regular ruthless culls. Drop people, guilt free. In fact I enjoy it.

   A life on twitter is a wasted life.
   (Whereas commenting on a blog post about twitter at 10PM on a Friday night is perfectly ok).

8. Posted by Hardeep Singh Dang 23rd January, 2009 at 10:13 pm

   Hey pat,
   I am a regular at your blog. I follow U on twitter. You dont follow me. Perfect. Makes sense.
   Somebody rightly said. You are a leader. People love to follow you because you do interesting stuff. I have been following you since the days of Allcallsfree.net and stuff. Like more than 2 years and stuff.
   But yeah. I do think following 870 people is not necessary. Cut down on that and You will be happy.

   

9. Posted by Bill Mullin 23rd January, 2009 at 10:18 pm

   I sir am one of the ignoble army of followers. I found you while doing research into GSM world sims. I liked your style. I Followed you. And you politely followed Back. if you choose to unfollow me so be it. I enjoy your comments but I dont think my drivel will ordinarily interest you. Its your choice. It much more important to make ones life reasonable. Chop it.

   “willythewise”

10. Posted by Oisin Prendiville 23rd January, 2009 at 10:18 pm

    What if you were to unfollow everyone, I mean everyone? Wait a few days and then start following people again, either once it occurs to you that you are missing out on something from them or once you receive an @reply and realise that you really do want to follow that person back.

    Cut Peter, cut Paul… then sit on it.

11. Posted by Paul M. Watson 23rd January, 2009 at 10:33 pm

    I’m not sure Paul cares about being cut. It is Twitter, ephemeral and fluid, fleeting. If cutting Paul matters to you then keep him, otherwise cut him.

12. Posted by Mihai Secasiu 23rd January, 2009 at 10:34 pm

    While everyone and their unborn baby (tweetbee ? ) is struggling to get more followers you complain about getting new followers. I don’t see how that bothers you. If you can’t keep up with twitter, follow less people, maybe even turn off your email notifications so you would not even know when someone starts following you or get even more radical protect your status updates.

13. Posted by Mike Kiely 23rd January, 2009 at 10:39 pm

    Hi Pat,

    I’m an occasional tweeter and, as you know, much preferred Jaiku for the control I had over whose flow I read. I have completist tendencies and Twitter triggers that where I feel I have to read everything everyone posts, which is impossible and, largely, unnecessary. It’s the letting go of it, posts AND people, that’s hard.

    Microblogging, blogging, linkedin, facebook, etc, etc. – I just find it all overwhelming most of the time as I’m usually busy with actual work. Now I see there’s a pressure to videoblog – that’s going to stretch some people to breaking point. I’m just wondering if the pressure to stay current is part of all of this too, hard to do when you’re following a million people. You’re definitely too busy a man for that Pat, a doer – if the morass of people is affecting you’re ability to do, then they’ve gotta go.

    Sorry for the wandering drivel, I largely dislike writing for pleasure (why I don’t blog!) but you’re mention of being overwhelmed struck a chord.

    Feel free to unfollow me (if you haven’t already, I don’t keep track), my guff is of little interest

14. Posted by Mike Kiely 23rd January, 2009 at 10:50 pm

    *sigh* I wrote “you’re” instead of “your”.

15. Posted by Bernie Goldbach
    Twitter: topgold
    24th January, 2009 at 9:06 am

    I like Twitter as much as I like my iPhone and cannot think of a better way to dip in and out of a marketing slipstream than to tap into twirl.

16. Posted by Gordon 24th January, 2009 at 12:09 pm

    I use Thwirl and find it easy enough to dip in and out. I can click on the Replies or DMs buttons to see if I’ve missed any comments directed at me while away. Those are minimal so it isn’t near an overload level.

    What I have dropped entirely however is IM. Friends, family and customers used to be able to talk to me using MSN Messerenger or Google Talk. This was a head wrecker, I couldn’t go to the bathroom without someone starting a conversation and they often took bloody ages to type anything.

    God bless Twitter for only allowing a set number of characters.

17. Posted by Pierre 24th January, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    Maybe you should follow no more than 100, and for the general “twitter pulse” use twitscoop ?
    We’re even proving tweetdeck with our api (they’re the only ones) – have you ever clicked on the little bird button on the top left hand side ?

18. Posted by Markus Göbel's Tech News Comments 24th January, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    That’s why I was afraid to start to use Twitter. Most of my prejudices have come true. Too much noise. I won’t care for followers. Who likes my stuff can subscribe. I try not to follow too many. All these personal messages and @replies are a terrible distraction. For serious work Twitter is a broken means.

19. Posted by Frank P 24th January, 2009 at 5:42 pm

    My advice would be examine what you would lose if you stopped using Twitter altogether, then plan your Twitter strategy going forward on retaining that value while cutting everything else.

    For example the end result will differ greatly if your perceived value is in getting up to the minute news on your industry to if your perceived value is in increasing visibility of your brand as against simply conversing with interesting heads at 2am when you can’t sleep.

    I guess in that respect I’m with Jackie Danicki.

20. Posted by Sarah 24th January, 2009 at 5:44 pm

    I’m only following about 100 people and find it increasingly difficult to keep up with whats going on on twitter – I honestly don’t know how more established tweeters deal such the huge amount of people they follow.
    I spent a lot of time on the web per day before I got into twitter and that’s only gotten worse since! Maybe twitTangle or friendfeed can help out; I can see the need for some categorizing, or way of prioritising tweets/information.

21. Posted by Eoghan McCabe 24th January, 2009 at 6:48 pm

    Pat, so sorry for not replying to your mail about this. My bad. I was trying to keep-up with Twitter at the time! Just kidding…

    My number of followers is still relatively low, so maybe I’m not suffering in the same way. But I think I know what you’re describing.

    I don’t think the solution is technical, but more human. I’ve used Twitter in a very limited way for a long time. I don’t follow that many people; I’m probably following too many now. I probably don’t understand your point because this suggestion sounds too simple to me, but would it help if you followed less people and kept your discussion within that circle? I understand the pressure to follow and respond to folks, but I don’t think it’s unfair or wrong not to. I don’t re-follow and reply to everyone, and I’ll admit I feel quite bad about it most times, but I’m always consciously trying to keep some distance from the Twitter world because I’m quite a distraction-sensitive person and it already keeps me from focusing on my work most days.

    Another thought that’s coming to mind is this: maybe your problem is the price you pay for being well-connected and keeping a high-profile. Keeping in touch with and doing business with any many different people around the world like you do is obviously hard, or everyone would be doing it.

    What are your feelings now after stewing over it for a day?

22. Posted by Darragh 24th January, 2009 at 6:58 pm

    I’m here, funny enough, through a tweet from Eoghan McCabe.

    Anton Mannering said something to me recently like Twitter being the equivalent of walking down a street and seeing someone you know and remembering that you had something to talk to about them. There was also another quote that said – “Facebook is about people you used to know; Twitter is about people you’d like to know better”.

    I find it interesting to hear what people I’d respect professionally are saying, and I follow them. I don’t expect replies, I use it more so as a blog post finder – especially following @bosca.

    I also like the craic on it. I was bewildered to see me on the recent Irish blogs list and have taken to be ruthless about who I follow back. No opportunity for dialogue? No chance.

23. Posted by Nigel Walsh 25th January, 2009 at 11:16 am

    I hear you – since it was on Jonathon Ross and Stephen Fry on Friday Night (http://www.socialmedian.com/story/2672221/stephen-fry-and-jonathan-ross-set-twitter-alight-telegraph), Phillip Scofield – everyone is jumping on the bandwagon.. new tools are neeed to help filter the noise..

    I guess its down to discipline – I am generally unfollowing people, but do use tweetdeck to follow certain topics well, eg TechBlogs. Friend and then have all the other ‘all friends’ column slowy becoming less relevant..

    I also log on less now with all the noise unless I get a DM or something. Most of my tweets are generated from social median….

    There is a similar post here too: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/68628

    It also goes back to one of the previous post – 10 reasons why I wont follow you on Twitter – http://mashable.com/2009/01/06/twitter-follow-fail/

24. Posted by Colm Brophy 26th January, 2009 at 3:42 pm

    I haven’t used Friendfeed much but I believe it does go someway towards solving the overload problems. I saw Bret Taylor (the founder) talk at FOWA in London and he explained some of the work they’ve been doing to understand relevancy and recommendation for social media (as he said the aggregation of content is the easy bit). They seem to be coming up with pretty sophisticated systems which consider a lot of explicit, implicit, and semantic factors to help recommend what items in your firehose of feeds you’ll find interesting.

    Video is here…http://events.carsonified.com/fowa/2008/london/videos/bret-taylor

25. Posted by Mick 26th January, 2009 at 11:07 pm

    I’m with Jackie… It’s a tool… An incredibly useful one; so long as you don’t loose control of it…

    I’ve never got as personal with it as some of my friends, for the reason that I’ve never wanted to get captured by it… I tend follow people for their content, not to start a relationship with them.

    Possibly as a result, I don’t really get the ‘ego’ stuff…

    As an aside, @Stephen Fry seems to be pulling in the names faster than ever before…

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