musing

A handful of questions about Twitter

when is too much too much?

That's the beauty of Twitter. You choose your own level of involvement.

if I don't respond to follow them does that mean that they know I'm not interested in them? why are they following me?

People new to Twitter, people who are unfamiliar with the follow/friend paradigm, and people who think it's a popularity contest will be bugged if you don't follow back. But that's because those three groups don't understand the power of a one-sided friendship.

On Facebook, you have to be friends (bi-directional) with someone to interact with them. Both of you have to agree on the status of your relationship.

But Twitter isn't about who is listening to you, or who is a bi-directional friend. Twitter is about who you interact with. For example, I am not following about a third of the people I interact with (reply to, talk about, etc). A good chunk of them aren't following me either. Because on Twitter, everything is open, and you don't have to have a defined relationship with someone to interact.

If someone responds to you, it'll show up under "@ replies" and you can carry on a conversation. But just because you're talking with them doesn't mean you have to listen to everything they say.

if they are following me are they listening or are they just waiting for me to follow them?

A little of both. Some people actually care, and some just want you to follow in return. Some are robots, some are spammers, and some are real people, who are really interested in what you have to say.

But regardless of the type of user, you should feel no obligation to follow back. I use a couple of tools to make this process easier.

Twimailer sends me really great "follow" notifications, so I can usually decide right in the email whether I want to follow back or ignore.

TweetSum calculates your recent followers' DBI ... It's a bit like a Google PageRank for Twitter users. It's based on their likelihood to follow you, to interact with you, and not send spammy tweets. It has a simple interface for sorting through the masses of followers and deciding who is worth following back.

at what point will i have to separate my friends from commerce, brands, I like, don't like, don't know.

I still haven't. I unfollow brands and companies that annoy me, but I don't worry too much about mixing them in with the stream. If you really need the separation, check out Nambu (Mac only) or TweetDeck (really awful interaction). They both allow you to group the people you follow, so you can interact with them as discrete streams. I tried that approach for a while, but it didn't suit me, so I'm back to one big river of messages.

how many is the right number of people to listen to, follow.

That depends.

I follow anyone who interests me at the time. If you make me laugh, or you start a conversation with me, or I interact with you in some other space--Facebook, IRL, mailing lists, etc--I might start following you. But to me, following is a fluid concept... If I tire of you, I might unfollow. If you tweet too much, I might unfollow you. If you set up automatic tweeting of all your Last.fm activity, there's a good chance I'll unfollow you.

But following isn't the only way I interact with people on Twitter. I track quite a few things that I'm interested in, and converse with people who talk about them. I listen to--and usually engage--everyone who talks to or about me, regardless of our respective follow status.

at what point does it get too hard to do?

When you think about it too much :)

This was originally a response to a post on a Meetup group I attend. It's a bit rough, but I feel like there's some value in it, so here ya go :)

The problem with driving the same section of road too often is that you start to do it on autopilot.

I used to drive a chunk of freeway to work every day. The exit I had to take was fairly intense. It has a short ramp and a really tight corner. I believe it is marked at 15 or 20 mph, but my memory could be playing tricks on me. Regardless, if you pay attention it is very obvious that you should slow down. Which I almost always did.

Except for that one day.

For some reason, the exit snuck up on me that day. For whatever reason, I went into that corner at 65 mph.

Looking back, I know that if I slammed on my brakes and tried to stop, I would have skidded off the road and possibly rolled the car. Looking back, I realize that I needed to countersteer and maintain constant acceleration to pull my little front wheel drive car through the corner. Looking back, I know that entering a controlled skid would effectively widen my wheelbase to the full diagonal of my car, providing additional resistance to rolling. Looking back, these things are all quite clear.

At the time, however, I thought none of these things.

I hit the brakes to bleed off as much speed as possible before I entered the corner. I turned hard and broke the rear end loose, then cranked the wheel into the skid and punched the gas. I skidded through that corner sideways at about 50 mph.

I think there is a moment when entering a crisis that everything slows down. Seconds take an eternity.

And in a blink of an eye, a split second, an eternity, it was over. I survived, shaken but intact. None the worse for the wear.

If you could fire the worst segment of your customers, would you do it?

If you could get rid of half the annoyance of a project at the risk of alienating those who benefit least from said project, would you do it?

If you had the magic bullet that could improve the experience of 80% at the exclusion of the other 20%, would you do it?

If I live my life in indecision because I'm paralyzed by the fear of failure, my choices are made by default. The wrong decision is better than no decision at all. If I take a shot and fall short, at least I took the shot. I am a better man for my failure.

Failure to choose is a far worse kind of failure.

It's hard to go wrong with the Magnetic Fields. I think my favorite part is the bridge. It's so… promising.

If someone makes a digital version of your popular board game, don't sue them. If someone ports your software to a new platform, or creates a wildly popular knockoff, don't sue them. Don't instinctively reach for a DMCA notice or a lawsuit. These developers aren't your competition, they're your fans.

Once you shut them down, you'll prob'ly write your own version for that platform. After all, you now see that there's a market. But if their knockoff already has an enormous fanbase, you won't win them over by shutting down the software.

Scrabulous, a Scrabble knockoff by two Indian students, became the most popular game on Facebook. 500,000 people played it per day, until it was removed from the platform. It was replaced by an inferior, and far less popular, licensed version by Hasbro and EA. Hasbro lost, even though they won.

Copyright holders: If the software works, buy it. Not only do you save the development time for the officially licensed version, but you inherit the fanbase.

Tris was one of the original jailbreak apps for the iPhone. It was a free Tetris clone, written by student Noah Witherspoon before legitimate third-party applications were possible. Once Apple opened the App Store, Tris joined Tap Tap Revolution in going legit. It was a popular app, but not long-lived. Unfortunately, EA had a much more awkward version of Tetris slated for the iPhone. So Tris was shut down.

Copyright holders: If the developer shows promise, hire them. Who better to have working for you than your biggest fans?