Joshua Guffey

Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

So here’s my thought. Tell me if you think I’m wrong. Or right.

“If you follow out of obligation, you’ve not helped anyone.”

Here’s my argument for this:
Does following someone who tweets primarily about fly fishing in Alaska really create meaningful connections. Does it help you to stay current in your field? Who are you actually benefiting if you follow out of obligation?

I would argue that the power of a network is not merely in it’s numbers, but also in its loyalty and its relevance to a central idea, pasison or value-set.

If I have a number of regular tweeps in my stream who actively tweet things that have no relevance to me they gain nothing. Not only that, but I’m now not seeing a more relevant tweet for every one one that ISN’T relevant to me. That sucks.

Furthermore, I’m following out of obligation and am annoyed by their six hundredth tweet about Alaskan bass. A negativite emotionality may develop with them and the whole of the Twitter platform as a result. If my irritation prevents or delay my participation on the network, the entire network potentially looses out from my absence.

Yeah, I’m that crazy.

Meanwhile all this same stuff is going on for the other party too. They can’t unfollow you because they’re afraid that you’ll unfollow them and end their world. Or loose a sale, whichever comes first.

Anyway. We all loose. Nobody wins. Just follow what’s relavant. The end.

And be sure you don’t follow me on ‘the Twitter’ at @JoshuaGuffey

Your thoughts?

Not at South by Southwest this year? Wish you were?

Well, now you kinda can be.  This page is streaming live pics in from Twitter which contain any photos from any of the popular Twitter picture sharing services that also reference SXSW. You can get a great sense for what’s happening there by watching this live stream of Twitter photos.  Just don’t blame me for what you see there.  It’s a party, you know what goes on.

Have fun!

[NOTE: If you're on an iPhone or otherwise can't see the above Flash, view the RSS feed]

Live pics from SXSW: (click the picture links, they’ll load in a new tab)

Please share this with friends below:

Today I had to move some of the people I follow on Twitter into a list entitled “oversharers“.  They post great stuff so I don’t want to unfollow them, but having them in my main Twitter stream kills.  Now I can go check out what they are posting about anytime I want without having them population my main stream.  Just a quick note about these tweeps…they both share each item multiple times.  As of now it’s just @QuadMedia and @Minervity, but as all things do, I’m sure it will grow with time.

You can make lists for anything.  I also have one for health and wellness and one for funny tweeps.  They each only have one tweep right now, but again…that’ll change.  The nice thing is that you can follow other people’s lists if they’ve made them into public lists.

You can follow my Twitter lists above by clicking on the associated links.  Or you can follow me on Twitter and see what I have to say.

What good uses can you think of for Twitter lists?

Twitter has lists & hashtags. That’s fine.
Facebook has lists, groups, pages, fine-grain privacy controls and the ability to hide users from our stream. That’s fine.

So what’s the problem??? — Relevance!

Is the data relevant for you in this moment? If you work in the tech world or even (and especially) in the social media space, it’s pretty likely that managing all of your connections  and non-stop, real-time data can be a major undertaking.

Twitter and Facebook have provided us with some basic tools for managing our data streams, but they are still relatively rudimentary and require us to manually categorize our connections by placing them, one-at-a-time into lists or groups of contacts.

I haven’t yet seen anything that goes beyond this level of sophistication for segmenting and filtering out, in real-time, data based on RELEVANCE and not merely upon the source of the data.

Hashtags and Twitter Search begin this process but there are some issues with these tools.

Hashtags are not used by everyone and therefore lose relevance as a tool since important information may not be tagged in a way that brings it to your attention.

An advanced Twitter Search can turn up some pretty relevant data in real-time; and some fancy RSS feed action can make this data more useful, but this tends to cast a wide net and still requires some significant wading to find the data that is most relevant for you. You can build some very specific searches that turn up more targeted data but this also typically filters out some terms you may not have thought of and ends up in a multitude of Twitter search RSS feeds to manage.

If this all sounds like a hell of a lot of work…that’s because it is.

As more of the world adopts Twitter, Buzz and other real-time data sharing technologies, we will have more people connecting with us, and hence, a bigger challenge then we’ve ever seen in trying to read more of what helps move us to forward and less of what doesn’t.

Social media isn’t going away. So how can we stay on top of our game? Well right now you can geek out and plug some Twitter search feeds into Google Reader and you’ll find your reader full of interesting things.  But it takes a special type of geek to even consider playing around with this level of “real-time, data-piping architecture”.

So what do the rest of us do?
I have a few ideas that may help moving forward.

Redundant tweet filtration

It’s my guess if you’ve read this far, that you know a lot of people on Twitter, many of which re-tweet and share the same articles. How many times do you really need to read a tweet about Google’s new policy change? Tweets that share the same links or information could be filtered out or downplayed to make room for unique information.

Real-time tweet relevance filtration

Google certainly has the advantage in this area.  In fact this technology is already in place in Google’s own search engine in the form of suggested search queries.  And even more robustly in the keyword selection tool for their ad network, Google Adwords.

The system knows what words and phrases are generally synonymous or in some way related. On Google.com the technology returns the most popular search terms based on the search habits of entire populations.  Imagine though if your tweet stream (tweets from those you follow) were filtered by relevance to your interests and even the specifics of your current project.  This reality isn’t far for Google.

Better collaborative spam filtration

Perhaps unfortunately for Twitter, Google has a clear lead here again. Gmail has provided a surprisingly spam resistant email experience based upon the ability to block spam message across the entire network given the input of the community it serves, Gmail users.

Yet over at Twitter, auto DMs haunt Twitter like an over-friendly neighbor with bad hygiene. Much of it outright offensive spam that has NO basis on any relationship with you or specific interest of yours as a prospective customer. [dramatic rant]

Google has always been about relevance and “organizing the world’s information”.   Given their ability to provide content in a relevance-centric fashion, I see potential for Google to truly move into social media in an even bigger way in the coming future when there is a potential for more noise in the social space.

Written by Joshua Guffey.  You can follow me on Twitter: @JoshuaGuffey

What do you have to say about this?
How else can we mere mortals manage to keep up with the increasing influx of information?  How  do you think the playing field will change in the next 6-12 months?

Social Network Connections

When you’re new to Social Networks

If you’re getting started in social media from a business standpoint
you may feel inclined to join Facebook, Twitter and every other
social network you find and become active on each. This impulse is
good and I would argue that doing so will help you to stay current,
relevant and accessible for your customers and in your industry;
however, I would offer a few words of caution and some direction for
what may not yet have revealed itself to be an rather ambitious task.

Many people think of these networks as “So I put up my profile and a
picture and then friend a bunch of people to get exposure.” Umm, no.

Consider that each of these networks are really new forms of
communication. They go both ways. Yes they are powerful. Yes you could
get great exposure. And yes they can even be fun ways of growing your
business. But remember, if you are to use them effectively, they are
also work. I know many of you shuddered just reading that. Sorry to
burst your bubble.

Think about it…every new network is a new point of contact, a new
‘inbox’ to manage. And each social network comes with it’s own
technical learning curve. So without totally frightening you away from
social media as a new channel for communication between you, your
current and potential clients and your industry as a whole, I’d like
to offer a few suggestions about how to begin; because I do believe
that in most cases the benefits outway the hurdles.

Focus your social efforts:

Don’t try to learn more than one major social network at once. Give
yourself enough time to learn one well enough to maintain it and to
move forward with it before you take on another. This may be a month
or two for you or it may be a longer or shorter process. You’ll know
when you’ve got it handled. You’ll be engaged and responsive on that
network. You’ll be in relevant conversations and you’ll be expanding
your connections all the time. Just don’t be ‘that guy’.

Engaging in multiple social networks simultaneously can be a bit
overwhelming, especially if you’re just learning the ’social ropes’.
There’s a new language to learn, etiquette to grasp and mental
bandwith to appropriate.

Here I’m mostly referring to Facebook and Twitter. Yes they’re both
very big, very busy and potentially a great place for you to setup and
begin building a reputation, a sense of ‘authority’ (I’m not super
fond of this term as it seems to be used frequently in a matter as to
suggest deception or subverting the natural process of becoming
recognized in a giving space, but you get the point) and also a sense
of connection with an interested community. Notice I didn’t say
audience; that isn’t what social media is about. It’s about actual
interaction. Forget that and you’re in trouble.

I would go ahead and grab your username at each major site so as to
secure brand integrity, but I wouldn’t actually become active on each
until I’m ready to integrate a new inbox and a new community of
individuals into my social media efforts.

I know that I just got finished saying essentially “don’t do this
unless you’re going to do it right” and now I seem to be contradicting
myself, but there’s actually a really simple solution. What I would
suggest is that on whichever social networks you’ve decided are less
relevant for your intial social media expansion (more on this in
another post) simply make a statement that tell people where you ARE
focused right now.

Your “Sorry, I’m out” message

It may read something like this:

“Thank you for visiting me (or your business name) on Facebook. It’s
important to me that I’m able to respond to you so I’m choosing to
focus only on Twitter at this time. I’d love to connect with you there
(I’m @JoshuaGuffey) or feel free to send me an email. Thank you!”

It doesn’t have to be long, elaborate or particularly elequant. Just
tell them what’s up and where to find you and express an honest
appreciation. I’ll get more into choosing a network to focus on later.

Until then, you can go grab your name in the places you think you
might setup shop and write a little blurb directing people to
somewhere to connect. Even if that’s just email address or blog. At
least you’re being straight-forward and making an effort.

Add your thoughts!
I’m sure there are important points that I missed.
What would you like to add to the comments section?

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/marc_smith/