An Eclectic Mind

How I decide when it’s time to stop following a Twitter friend.

I don’t follow many people on Twitter — less than 100, in fact. I think part of the reason for this is that when I follow someone, I follow him/her. I sit at my desk with Twitterrific running on the right side and, thoughout the day, I peek at it to see what’s going on with the people I follow. I respond a lot, which I know is falling out of favor these days. But that’s because the people I follow are my office co-workers, so to speak. They keep me company while I work and, like any workplace environment, social conversation is part of the picture.

Enter, the Abusers

Anyway, because I read all the tweets of the people I follow — well, at least all of those that appear in Twitterrific while I’m at my desk or on the Web when I happen to take a peek with my Treo — I see patterns in the way they tweet. I wrote about this at some length last June. (Is it that long ago already?) And I soon discover which ones have joined Twitter for purely self-promotional reasons.

You know these people. Almost every tweet they make is a link to something they’ve written. While I’m guilty of using Twitterfeed to automatically tweet about new blog entries as I post them, these folks often go far beyond that by repeatedly tweeting the same damn links, sometimes over several days. This wouldn’t be so bad if what they were linking to was something worth reading, but often, it’s just more self-promotional crap.

These people don’t last long as my Twitter friends.

Three Strikes and You’re Out

To make it easier to identify the Twitter friends who are most guilty of using Twitter primarily (or, worse yet, exclusively) for self-promotion, I’ve developed the Twitter Strikeout Rule. It’s very simple and can easily be applied by anyone who knows the rules of American baseball.

Here’s how it works:

• Each time a person tweets, he’s “at bat.”
• If the tweet is entirely self-promotional in nature, that tweet is a strike.
• If the person has three strikes in a row, he’s out. (That means I simply stop following him.)

The way I see it, my life is already bombarded with advertisements. One of the few places I can get some relief is in my own office, at my desk. Do I really need to see an endless stream of self-promotional bullshit from the people I let into my workplace? Of course not. So I merely push them out.

Once of the nice things about Twitter is that it doesn’t tell people when someone has stopped following them. That’s nice because it means I don’t have to insult anyone. They don’t even notice I’m gone. Most of these folks have far more followers than they deserve anyway.

A Home Run

Taking the baseball analogy a bit further — heck, why not? — a Twitter Home Run is a tweet that’s really good. Usually it’s a link to a video or blog post or plain old Web page that is funny or makes you think or teaches you something really useful.

Sometimes — but rarely — its just a plain linkless tweet that does the same thing.

Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies), for example, has the uncanny ability to pop these things off more often than anyone else I follow. Here’s one from a while back that I favorited:

Starting a blog solely to make money is like learning ventriloquism to meet girls.

John Gruber (@gruber) writes the funniest rants. Sherrie Holmes (@sherrieholmes) can be hysterically funny. Tom Negrino (@negrino) comes across as a very funny, grumpy, old guy. (Sorry, Tom. I know you’re not old. But you must admit you write grumpy tweets.)

Think about the achievement of using 140 characters or less to communicate something memorable, something to make a reader laugh or think. That’s pretty special. It’s something that all serious Twitter members should aspire to.

But then again, that’s just my opinion. What do you think? Which of your Twitter friends hit home runs? Use the Comments link or form to tell us.

More on Twitter

I’ve been using Twitter for about a year now. (The first blog post where I refer to it dates back to March 21, 2007.) I’ve tweeted 3,806 times since then. Most tweets come from Twitterrific, but I also tweet right from the Twitter Web page at my desk or via text message from my Treo when I’m out and about. Amazingly, I still enjoy it. I’ve made a bunch of real friends and have strengthened my relationships with people I knew before Twitter.

If you’re interested in reading more about what I have to say about Twitter, you might find these articles interesting:

• Four Steps to Get the Most Out of Twitter
• Twitter Spam
• Twitter “Friendships”
• Message to Twitter Users: Use a Lint Screen
• Twitter Sluts
• Twit This

Why can’t they look at least a little like the person they represent?

Like so many techno-geeks these days, I’m involved in a bunch of social networking sites: Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, RedBubble, Flickr, MyBlogLog, etc. And all of these sites give each member the ability to include an avatar — an image to represent that user.

Maybe I’m not very creative, but my avatar is a photo of me. It was taken by photographer Jon Davison during one of our flights last September. It shows me in one of my favorite places: at the controls of my helicopter, flying over the Arizona desert. (I think I’m over the Little Colorado River Gorge in this shot.)

The way I see it, my avatar is supposed to represent me. What could represent me better than a photo of me doing something I like to do?

Evidently, not everyone has the same idea. While many of the avatars I see in Twitterrific are photos or drawings of the people they represent, quite a few are not. And in other social networking sites — MyBlogLog comes to mind — the majority of avatars don’t bear any resemblance to the people they’re supposed to represent.

I find this bothersome, especially among my Twitter friends. Why? Well, in most cases, an avatar is the only visual representation I have for a person. If the avatar features purple hair or a goofy cartoon face — you know who you are, folks! — that’s the image I have of that person. And it’s a lot tougher for me to take these unrealistic avatars seriously.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I find it easier to communicate with people I can take seriously.

A few more notes on avatars:

• Some people seem to like using their Second Life avatars as their social networking avatar. While I could write a dissertation covering my thoughts about Second Life — starting with, is your first life so bad that you need a second one? — I’ll just say that Second Life avatars are generally a highly stylized version of how people want to look. While few of us are supermodels, surely there’s a decent photo of these people somewhere that they can use online.
• Some people use glamour photos for avatars. I have a colleague who does this. When I met her in real life, I didn’t recognize her. Let’s face it, we only look like our glamour photos in our glamour photos — after they’ve done the photo shoot and brought our faces into Photoshop for some digital plastic surgery. Every time I see this avatar, I have to remind myself that she doesn’t really look like the photo.(Of course, it’s also made me want to get a glamour photo.)
• Some people use photos of their pets as avatars. Talk about going to the dogs! Do the dogs really look better? Or do they just identify with their dogs? Ditto for cats, birds, and miscellaneous wild animals.

Of course, none of this has to do with special-purpose avatars used to promote an idea or cause. An example is the Frozen Pea avatars that many of us wore on Twitter for a few Fridays to raise awareness and funds for Breast Cancer Research through the Frozen Pea Fund. I was a single pea for the day. My favorite avatar was one Twitter friend who created an image of his head sticking out of a pea car.

But I’d like to start a movement among serious social networkers. Be proud of your face and show it off as your avatar! It doesn’t have to be a full-face shot; it can be creative. (Some of the best avatars I’ve seen show only part of a person’s face.) But it should show you, as you really are.

I’d just like to see who I’m tweeting to.

Should they stay or should they go?

A feed subscriber has indicated that he’s not too fond of the “Twitter Updates” posts that are posted automatically each night by Twitter Tools. He’d like to see them off the feed.

But if people want them off the feed, they probably also want them off the site. So that’s the question for this newest poll.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about and would like to vote, please look at some examples first.

Use the Comments link or form below if you like. Try not to be too cruel.

6-Sep-07 Update:
I turned the Twitter Updates post feature off over the weekend.

Today, I downloaded and installed the Ultimate Category Excluder plugin and set it up to keep the Twiiter Updates posts off the Home page and out of the feeds. So I turned the Twitter Updates Post feature back on. With luck, they should not appear in feeds or on the Home page. But they’ll continued to be archived to this blog, primarily for my own journaling purposes. Thanks everyone for the feedback. I’m closing the poll down now.

12-Dec-07 Update:
I decided to kill the Twitter Update posts completely. Not only did I disable the plugin’s features, but I deleted all the update posts from the system.

A service that makes it easy to post links on Twitter.

I recently found Twit This, a Web site that enables you to post any URL to Twitter as a tweet.

Here’s How It Works

When you browse to a Web page you want to share with your Twitter followers, you invoke Twit This. (I’ll explain how to do that in a moment.) The first time you use this feature (or if you have not set up your browser to remember your password) you’ll be prompted for your Twitter User ID and Password to log in. You’ll see a form like the one here. Choose an option from the pop-up menu to indicate the text you want to appear before the link and, if desired, add some additional text in the box beside it. Then click the Twit This Page button. The link and your text will be sent to Twitter as a tweet. A confirmation page with a link to the tweet appears so you can view it.

It’s quick and easy. The only thing I don’t like is that it doesn’t return you to the original page when it’s done. (But I’m just picky that way.)

Invoking Twit This

There are a number of ways you can invoke Twit This for a URL.

• Install and use the Twit This bookmarklet. On the Twit This home page, you’ll find a bookmarket that you can drag to your browser’s toolbar. You can then click the resulting button while viewing a page you want to Tweet about to access Twit This’s features.
• Click a Twit This button or link in the post. Of course, that requires the blogger or Webmaster to include a link like this. (Keep reading.)

Adding a Twit This Link to Your Posts

The Twit This site’s Home page includes code you can insert in your Web pages to add a link that will invoke Twit This. The code, which uses JavaScript, is available with or without a clickable button. You can include the code anywhere you like on a page.

If you’re a WordPress user, you might want to try the Twit This plugin, which will place a link for each post. I downloaded this plugin but I admit that I didn’t install it. I’m very particular about how and where my links appear, so I decided on a do-it-yourself approach.

To manually add a Twit This link to a post, insert the following code anywhere within The Loop in your template file(s):

<a href="http://twitthis.com/twit?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>">Twit This</a>

When you save the change, the link will appear for each post. You can see the Twit This links on this site at the bottom of each post. I got fancy and included a tiny Twitter icon so it would match the format of the other bookmarking/social networking sites I listed.

[Shameless Plug: If you don't know what The Loop is or how to edit your WordPress theme files, you need to get a copy of our book, WordPress 2: Visual QuickStart Guide. Chapter 6 will fill you in on what you need to know. You can learn more about this book and get more WordPress tips at the book's companion Web site, http://www.wpvqs.com/]

Try It!

Obviously, if you’re a Twitter user, the bookmarklet is a great way to share your Web finds with your Twitter followers. But if you’re a blogger or Web designer interested in getting more exposure for your posts or site, including a Twit This link can help spread the word. After all, not everyone will have the Twit This bookmarklet installed. But many Twitter users will be interested in trying out a Twit This link.

After all, that’s how I learned about Twit This myself.

A new term defined.

Okay, so maybe this isn’t a new term. And maybe I’m not qualified to define terms like these. But as I get an e-mail to inform me of yet another Twitter follower who has nothing in common with me, I came up with this term and felt a need to share it and its definition with the blogosphere.

A Twitter slut is a Twitter member who indiscriminately adds Twitter friends to his (or her) account. He may be doing this for one or more of the following reasons:

• He’s believes that all of the people he adds as friends will reciprocate and add him as a friend so he has a large audience for his tweets. I discussed this phenomena in my “Twitter Spam” post.
• He’s hoping that other people will respond directly to his tweets using the standard @membername format so other people will make him their friend.
• He’s desperate to follow the tweets of anyone who can type intelligible comments into Twitter. That is a minority that I am apparently part of.

Twitter sluts can easily be identified by their friends to followers ratio. If that ratio exceeds 3:1 (that is, 3 friends for each 1 follower), that person is may be a Twitter slut. If the ratio is around 5:1 (5 friends for each 1 follower), that person is likely to be a Twitter slut. It the ratio is closer to (or higher than) 10:1 (10 friends for each 1 follower), that person is definitely a Twitter slut.

Here’s an example. This person has been a member of Twitter for only 9 days. Yet he’s added over 4,000 members as friends. With only 9 updates to his name, he has apparently attracted 398 suckers to reciprocate his friendship.

(Okay, okay. I’ll try to tune down the cynicism. But it’s very difficult sometimes.)

The other day, a Twitter member on the public timeline asked, “Am I the only one who gets a bunch of new friends every time I post a tweet?”

The answer: no, you’re not. Like the rest of us, you’ve just been discovered by a handful of Twitter sluts.

So what?

After reading, mostly on Twitter, a lot of hype about Pownce, I finally got an invitation from a fellow Twitterer, newmediajim. I signed right up to check it out.

And was extremely unimpressed.

Sure, Pownce is pretty — much prettier than Twitter. And Pownce is apparently attracting the more mature crowd that I wish used Twitter more frequently. And Pownce offers a lot of additional features, like file exchange, event sharing, and the ability to send messages to just your friends — or a specific friend.

But, as one of the recent TWiT participants mentioned on the most recent TWiT podcast, why do we need that? We have e-mail to send files and online calendar programs to send event notifications.

Finding new Pownce friends is virtually impossible without a “public timeline” like Twitter has — you can only see the messages posted by your Pownce friends and the people you are a “fan” of. Of course, there is the occasional “public” message, which goes out to everyone. But in the one week I’ve been a member, I’ve only received one of those, so it’s obviously not a feature people want to use.

And I really like Twitterific, which works with Twitter. The Pownce non-browser solution requires you to install Adobe Air and then an application that runs within it. I don’t know about you, but I think Adobe is even worse than Microsoft at installing a lot of useless under-the-hood crap on your hard disk when you install its software. I prefer to keep new Adobe apps off my computer unless I need them to get my work done. (Can someone explain what Adobe Bridge is all about and why I should keep it when I have a perfectly good Mac OS Open dialog?)

And then there’s the advertisements vs. fees we can expect in the future. A note on the Pownce sidebar urges you to “Go Pro!” This will support larger files — certainly larger than you can send in e-mail — and will hide advertisements. Right now, there are no advertisements. There aren’t any on Twitter, either — unless you count the never-ending stream of self-promotional tweets by some Twitter members (which are easily blocked out). Pro will cost you $20/year. Is it worth it? We’ll see. But I know that if Pownce starts filling up with advertisements, I’ll use it even less than I currently do — which is once every few days, just to check in.

Because you must have an account to participate at all on Pownce, the folks at Pownce give new members 6 invitations so you can invite your friends. Trouble is, I have enough trouble convincing my friends to get online with Twitter, which I prefer. If I’m going to bring new friends online to this new kind of social networking phenomena, I’m going to ask them to join Twitter, not Pownce. I have no desire to monitor both services.

Now I know that Pownce was created by the folks who gave us Digg. And there are rumors flying around that any anti-Pownce Diggs are being buried by the folks at Digg. (It would be interesting if everyone who read this post dugg it just to see if it survived this test; you can find a “Digg This!” link at the bottom of the post.) And the TWiT-TV team seemed to have a lot of respect for the programming team. But even they aren’t pushing Pownce. And that says a lot because they push almost everything they talk about.

In any case, I have 6 Pownce invitations — unless the folks at Pownce take them away from me for being so unenthusiastic. I’ll hand them out to the first six people who comment on this post and specifically say that they want an invitation. Please do not put your e-mail address in the body of the comment. Just put it in the e-mail field of the comment form; I’ll find it.

And if you’re reading this and already have a Pownce account, please use the Comments link or form to tell us what you think about it. Am I missing something? Or do you have the same general thoughts about Pownce?

And, for the record, I was equally unenthusiastic about Jaiku. Sorry.