How to Fail at Web 2.0: Alienate the Geeks

Today, Twitter made the biggest mistake it could make: removing their user’s freedom to choose. Now, I’m not saying they didn’t think it through—they blogged about it exactly one year ago, so they spent an entire year thinking about how it would effect their user base.

This isn’t just about discovering new people: I’ve told many of my friends on several occasions that some of the most interesting this I have to say are in reply to somebody else. I think this applies to most people: rarely do I find it interesting when people are talking to themselves—and almost never do I actually learn something about them.

The community response to this whole thing has been overwhelming: as of this writing, #fixreplies is the hottest trending topic. Followed closely by #twitterfail and "Goodbye People I Never Knew" (which was the title of a blog post about it). So overwhelming, in fact, that Twitter updated their blog post to include some smarmy “you’ll still see mentions” crap.

They seem to think that a #followfriday-style recommendation was “just as good” as replies—but, what is a better recommendation: them conversing with someone because they truly are interesting, or them telling you somebody is interesting? I tend to think the former.

Now, I understand: something like 97% of Twitter users never changed the default setting (the one that's now thrust upon all of us). The people who did change it, however, are the ones that Twitter owes the most to: the power users. These are the early adopters—the geeks—the people who told their friends “hey, have you checked out this Twitter thing? No? Here, let me set you up an account.” These are the people who drove the current media storm into a frenzy. They used to use Twitter to discover new, interesting people, and that was part of why it was successful. But now? They are pissed.

When your core business revolves around communication, you should just stand back, and let people communicate.

P.S. In the time it took me to write this, there were 2400 #fixreplies tweets.

Twitter Lexicon: A Proposal

 

As I use Twitter more, I find myself trying to referencing it in new ways. Most of them are simple, and many other people have already started using—but some things just don’t come up often.

Glossary

Twitter [twi-ter] (n): A microblogging service. “I use Twitter.”

twitter[twi-ter] (v): To use Twitter. “I’m going to twitter that.”

twittering[twi-ter-ing] (v, present): Using Twitter. “There are a lot of people twittering this.”

twittered[twi-turd] (v, past): Previously used Twitter. “I twittered about that.”

twit [t-wit] (n): A person who uses Twitter. “I am a twit.”

tweep [t-weap] (n): A person you know on Twitter. “My tweep @LtWorf and I are going to the store.”

tweeple [t-we-ple] (n, plural): A group of people on Twitter. “Some tweeple just don’t get it.”

tweet [t-weat] (n): A post on Twitter. “Did you read that tweet?”

tweet [tw-‘et] (v): To post on Twitter. “I’m so going to tweet this.”

tweeting [tw-‘et-ing] (v, present): Currently posting on Twitter. “Hold on, I’m tweeting what you just said.”

twate [tw-‘at] (v, past): Having posted on Twitter in the past. “I twate about that an hour ago.”

twaten [tw-‘at-n] (adj): Has been twate. “That has been twaten to death.”

twote [t-w’ot] (v): To quote something from Twitter. “@StephenColbert just twote @biz on-air”

twoted [t-w’ot] (v, past): Quoted something from Twitter. “Earlier, @StephenColbert twoted @biz on-air”

Regarding “Twate”

I spent many hours thinking about what form the past simple and past participle forms of “tweet” should take, and I had a couple other candidates:

“twote”/”twitten,” from “wrote”/”written;” but it sounds like a portmanteau of “twitter” and “quote,” which made it into the lexicon on its own.

“twang”/”twung,” from “sang”/”sung” — Just doesn’t sound right at all.

“twaid” from “said;” but could be mistaken for a portmanteau of “twitter” and “paid.”

Eventually, I settled on “twate,” using “eat” as a conjugation template, and arrived at the tweet/twate/tweeten.

Flying Above The Clutter: Tips for Managing a Personal Twitter Timeline

I consider myself a Twitter power user. I’m not well-known, and I don’t update about every single thing I do; but I do pay attention, and update when there’s something for me to say. These tips are from my own experience, and probably aren't well-suited for companies trying to use Twitter as a customer relations tool.

Tip #1: Only follow people you find interesting

I follow only 72 people (at the time of writing). Most power users seem to follow hundreds, if not thousands, of people. I think this is a mistake –– the main use case of microblogging is to keep track of what your friends, family, co-workers, and other people you care about, are doing. Not everybody on your following list has to be interesting all the time, but they should on occasion tweet about something you care about. If you find somebody that seems interesting, add them to your following list, and see what happens.

Tip #2: Use an advanced Twitter client

The client I use is TweetDeck, an Adobe AIR-based client that works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. TweetDeck is a major memory hog, but it is very much worth it: it has the (currently) unique feature of allowing you to create and manage separate timelines for groups of people, searches, @replies and direct messages. It also has auto-completion for your friends list (for both @replies and direct messages), spell-checking, and integration with many different URL-shortening services (which is useful for writing tweets that fit in 140 characters).

Tip #3: Create concentric tiers around yourself

When using TweetDeck, I find it very useful to create timelines for people in tiers. I started out with just two tiers: one for close, personal friends; and another for everyone else. This system allows you to read everything your friends tweet, and allows you to skip over everybody else if you find yourself lacking the time or desire to read them. About a month ago, I moved up to a three-tier system, separating out the people from the main timeline that I was starting to really notice high-quality tweets from. I am even considering adding a fourth-tier. Use as many tiers as you have a need for, but always be sure to make more interesting tiers smaller than less interesting ones: in any given day, I get 30-40 tweets on Tier 1, 70-80 on Tier 2, and 130+ on Tier 3.

Tip #5: Don’t be afraid to promote and demote people from tier to tier

Since moving to the three-tier system, I have followed a couple people who I wasn’t sure would turn out to be very interesting, and so they started out on the lowest level. But, as time drew on, I found them to be almost constantly interesting, so I promoted them up further.  Likewise, some people on Tier 2 started being less interesting than they had been, and as a consequence moved them down to Tier 3.

Tip #6: Feel free to stop following people when you stop finding them interesting

Some people obviously think this is harsh step, to stop following somebody. Why? If I find myself completely glossing over all the updates from a certain person, it means somewhere in my sub-conscious, I’ve noticed a pattern where everything they tweet is boring to me. I will unfollow them instantly, without regard to their personal feelings. If somebody’s self-worth is directly tied to the number of followers they have on Twitter, they have much bigger problems than whether or not I think they are interesting.

Tip #7: Create searches for things you care about

Searching Twitter for topics you care about can be a great way to find some very interesting people. I currently have search windows for “#haiku OR #tanka” which I read almost religiously. Try to pick things that you really care about, and don’t limit yourself to just hash-tags, either: a lot of interesting people don’t seem to use hash-tags at all.

Too many people
to bail out your Tweet-boat.
Here is a bucket.