Comments on: Scoble’s Dead Wrong About Twitter

By: Twittering « Bons mots

Twittering « Bons mots — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:14:12 +0000

[...] can find me at https://twitter.com/BonDean. For other newbies, Dave Fleet has some great tips for effective Twittering [...]

By: Liberate Media » Blog Archive » Best weekly social media and web 2.0 news round up for week ending 4th April 2008

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:06:58 +0000

[...] Scoble is Dead Wrong About Twitter [...]

By: Geoff Livingston

Geoff Livingston — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:54:00 +0000

You are dead on with this, Dave. I have many followers and I can’t read everything they say. For me it’s more of a stream where I pick out themes. But as a relationship tool for actually listening to individuals many tweets — which are all important to each person — it has lost its place for me.

By: David Jones

David Jones — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:13:15 +0000

The way I’ve decided to use Twitter is as follows:
- follow people I know or those on the A list I respect
- I’ll turn you off, if you clog up my stream with stuff of no interest to me i.e. “I’m streaming live right now. Come chat.”
- I don’t automatically add people who follow me
- I do tend to follow people who @ me
- I don’t have everyone’s tweets going to my BlackBerry…most, but not all

It works for me.

By: John Piercy

John Piercy — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:07:51 +0000

Well written and informative . I’ll stop and think before I add a twitter follower .
Thanks dave .

By: Colin Fast

Colin Fast — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 22:21:55 +0000

Mike, that’s the same perspective I use in approaching Twitter. That’s why I think Scoble is off his rocker. It’ impossible to have that kind of dialogue with 16,000 people.

I also think you contradict yourself a bit. If you’re technically following 1,000, but only paying attention to 200, then why not cull your follow list? Don’t you think you’d be building a much more “vibrant, active community” if you got rid of the unnecessary noise?

By: Mike Keliher

Mike Keliher — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:54:07 +0000

When you read Scoble’s bit about following people, try changing your view of “follow.” Don’t think of it as the Twitter-centric verb meaning “opt to receive message from” someone. Think of it as actually noticing a person, reading some of what they say, responding every once in a while and perhaps having some shared interests.

With change in perspective, is he still “dead wrong”? I really don’t like blanket statements about “this is the way Twitter (or anything else) works” because there’s rarely one way. But I follow (in the technical Twitter sense) just more than 1,000 people, and I follow (in the “actually kinda pay attention to them” sense) what must be a couple of hundred of them.

That’s a low ratio, I suppose, but having a vibrant, active community is what makes Twitter interesting and valuable to me. I’m not following people for the sake of “boosting numbers.” I’m doing it because anybody could say something interesting at any time.

By: Dave Fleet

Dave Fleet — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:54:12 +0000

Hi Kara,

Yes, but I’m pretty narrow in what I call spam. If it’s someone who’s just getting started and is following a lot more people than are following them, I may follow back if we have similar interests. If it’s obviously spam - i.e. following thousands, followed by just a few and pumping out one-way messages, then I’ll often block.

The beauty of Twitter, though, is that it’s opt-in. Everyone has their own preferences, so do what works for you.

By: Jimmy Adames

Jimmy Adames — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:43:33 +0000

Hi Dave.

There is always overkill whenever a marketing concept hits the market. Because I’m promoting a blog that teaches the basics of Internet Marketing I have to be careful not to jump into things before making sure I don’t rub people the wrong way.

I love Twitter for more than one reason and I feel it can be a powerful marketing tool, but more importantly an even bigger learning platform. I like things short and sweet because of time constraints, so reading and writing Tweets is perfect.

I’m following about 73 people and I have 35 followers and I honestly don’t know at this point what my cutoff will be, but as my list grows I will eventually streamline who I follow to those who add value but I will have to step up my game to do the same.

Great post.

You got me thinking.

Thanks.

By: kara

kara — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:24:29 +0000

I’ve discovered many folks tweet way less than I do. I still follow them.
One question - do you block followers who are spam?