Whether Friends count more than followers

Byrichard

As you know I’ve been working on unfollowing more and more people over the past few weeks because I felt I was missing the tweets by those who want to participate actively with me. The consequence is that I’ve found twitter to be more sociable once more.

According to a recent article what I felt was the case has been demonstrated through research.

the number of total posts eventually saturates as a function of the number of followers. This implies that users with a large number of followers are not necessarily those with very large number of total posts.

Hence, the number of people a user actually communicates with eventually stops increasing while the number of followees can continue to grow indefinitely.

1. Twitter users have a very small number of friends compared to the number of followers and followees they declare. This implies the existence of two different networks: a very dense one made up of followers and followees, and a sparser and simpler network of actual friends. The latter proves to be a more influential network in driving Twitter usage since users with many actual friends tend to post more updates than users with few actual friends.

As this article implies and demonstrates there is no reason to follow thousands of people. What you should concentrate on instead is a small network of friends because by knowing that you can find them on the site it remains relevant. The more people you follow, and the more filtering you use the more you lose.

If you follow six thousand people on twitter but use tweetdeck to keep an eye on things those following you are going to realise you’re never seeing their output. As a result of this they will unfollow you. If you’re not social with them then why bother following you anymore?

How to Make Friends and Get The Most Out Of Twitter.

Byrichard

Twitter is a multiplatform social chatroom that allows you to converse with people around the world from anywhere in near to real time. It is knowing a rapid growth and so here are a few guidelines to getting started.

140 Characters

If you thought 160 characters for SMS were limited then this limit will be even more of a challenge. That’s nothing to worry about yet, for now all you need to do is create an account and tell us what you’re doing. Don’t make it to personal.

Character building

You can’t tell us everything about you in 140 characters so please don’t try, there’s no point. Instead tell us about something you’re enjoying right now. If it’s a nice sunny tell us something you like doing. A walk is enough. In a few hours time come back and tell us something else you’ve been doing. If you met someone interesting tell us broadly why you enjoyed meeting this person. This will help us establish whether we’re interested in following someone with your character traits. Don’t worry though, you won’t give that much away anyway.

Who to follow

Do you know any bloggers or personalities that you enjoy reading about? If so then add them but not too many. It’s fun to know what they’re doing but you won’t get much of a conversation out of them.

Take a look at the timeline. Who is talking now. Who is having fun, who is doing something that you find interesting? If you find three or four people that you think may be interesting click on their name and look at their twitter timeline. Are there a lot of @ messages or a lot of links. If there are a lot of @ messages then this may be a good sign. It may mean this person is open for conversation with someone like you.

If all they do is link to content then I would think twice about following them. There’s a good chance they are not passionate twitter users. They are simply feeding links without paying much attention to what is being said. For that you might as well use an rss aggregator and get their information that way.

Are any of your friends adopting technology that you enjoy. See whether you can get them to join twitter with you. If you exchange messages with real life friends there are two benefits. The first is that you may be able to trust them. The second reason is that you can plan events with them, see what they’re doing without having to call them to find out.

Another effect is that if groups other than just your friends do this there’s a chance several communities can emerge, and occasionly get together for meetups.

Of course this means that you can plan on meeting certain people during events. If you know you’re going to a conference then see whether there’s a twitter stream, see if you can find out who’s answering to the stream. You may find some more interesting people.

Applications to use

There are three methods I would recommend using for accessing information on twitter. These are the web interface for when you’re on any computer other than your own, simply because it’s a fast and efficient way of getting to see what’s happening. When you’re not following that many people it also means you can watch the public view, scouting for new friends.The drawback is that this takes a lot of time. That’s where certain desktop apps come into play.

One of those I recommend is Twhirl, and it’s not just because I’m a seesmic user whose met Loic several times by now. It’s because it fits in well when you’ve got a laptop. You can go about all your work whilst twhirl checks every three minutes whether there are new messages. It only tells you when there’s a new @reply. There are two benefits to this.

The first of these benefits is that your mind is at ease, you’re not worrying about missing who wants to reach you because the software will fetch that automatically. The second reason is that you can quickly skim through the conversations that are taking place in real time. It’s not per keyword but don’t worry about this.

Some people like to use tweetdeck but I do not recommend this solution. When you’re new to twitter you may only be following three or four people who are active at a time. As a result it’s very easy for you to keep track of conversations, even if six hours have elapsed. For more frequent users though they’ll get confused. Confused people are lazy. They won’t bother asking you what you were refering to. They will simply not answer.

At first you’ll tell me that doesn’t matter, that you don’t care about not getting answers. Don’t worry though, after a while, and through personal connections being formed you will be dissapointed when friends don’t answer. Trust me, a lot of people feel that.

Dabr.co.uk is my favourite mobile application and it works on all 3g phones. it’s a quick and easy way to keep up with all conversations and replies. I’ve already sent thousands of messages with it, still happy 🙂

Spring cleaning

People’s tweeting styles change with time, and so do your expectations on what to get out of twitter. As a result you may be following twenty people who are local to you. When you move though your associations with them decay and after a while it may do you some good to unfollow them on twitter. you’ve still got facebook and their blog to keep up to date. Find new people that are active.

As I said earlier if you see that some people are too self promotional then unfollow them, especially when they don’t respond to your replies. It makes a lot of noise on twitter if we have three hundred replies sent without conversations actually taking place. It’s frustrating for those that follow you.

No automation

On twitter automation is your enemy, never let anything be automatic. Remember that there are real people giving their time and attention to read your stream. If all you do is send links then they will lose their desire to interact with you. This includes Last.fm lists, google likes and dislikes and more. If you write a blog post a day then rather than send a link tell people you’ve just written a post because you were inspired by that topic. If they’re active at the same time as you they go to your profile and find the link. If they’ve been following you for a few months they type three letters and your blog will appear quickly.

Conclusion

Twitter is a conversational tool. The more time you put into being conversational with fellow users the more friendships you will establish. With these friendships you may gain from professional and personal relationships. When you trave you may find people to meet without being in solitude. You’re free to do what you want with twitter but the more of your personality you put forward the more you should gain.

Why it’s a waste of time to follow certain people

Byrichard

In this article there are recommendations about who you should follow on twitter and I must admit I followed almost every one of them. I have unfollowed everyone of them except one. Chris Brogan. He’s the person whom I feel is most likely to answer a tweet directed at him.

If you’re following someone for their ideas don’t follow them on twitter if they’re not going to converse with you. It’s a waste of time and you’re missing the gems from the smaller time twitter users. Twitter is not about reaching a mass audience, it’s about reaching a focus group.

Twitter’s strenght is the way in which a cluster of people can discuss an idea and bring it to fruition. I’ve seen how tuttle went from being the Social media cafe to being called Tuttle. I watched as people talked online and wanted to meet and collaborate. Thanks to Lloyd Davis and others that idea became a reality.

As a result of this idea whenever I would drop by the Tuttle Mornings (every single Friday I was in London) I would watch as people spoke about their ideas and projects and how they wanted to keep in touch. Twitter gave them the initial contact before the meeting, as well as the follow up once they had met in person. It created a great network of people for getting things done.

If you think twitter is about following a thousand people you’re an idiot. If you think it’s about being followed by a thousand people you’re an idiot. That’s not what it’s there for. It’s there for real time conversations across a number of platforms. It’s there so that when I’m waiting for a train I check what people are doing, for when I travel to meet with friends in other cities and more.

If you’re not on twitter to converse you’re wasting my time, that’s why I’ve unfollowed over a hundred people rcently. If you’ve got something interesting to say people will mention you in their conversations, I will find your blog and I will subscribe to it. That’s the best place for ideas, they’re presented, shared and debated, all activities that take a lot more than a hundred and fourty characters, and threading for that is essential.

Now stop following those who talk, and start interacting with those that listen.

The Feedly and Friendfeed way of doing things

Byrichard

Venture capitalists love to invest in something that works, something that’s concrete. If it’s got a 900% user growth rate overall and tripled in size in the UK alone then this is excellent. That’s the perfect website to invest in. Of course I’m speaking here of twitter. The 140 character twitter website that no one has time to use yet everyone flocks to. With the recent twestival you see that it’s gone local, and that can only mean one thing, that it’s gone mainstream. Perfect, now the web celebs can come in without looking too geeky. Cue Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry to name just two individuals.

It’s passed though. The golden age of twitter is behind us. 140 characters and social presence have moved on from there and I think the companies we should be focusing next are feedly. friendfeed and google reader. The reason for this is simple. We all love to create content and we all love to talk about it. We all love to show others that we’ve found something but the drawback is that we create a lot of duplicates. These duplicates aren’t bad if you’re only following five or six friends. When you follow twenty eight thousand though it does start to get tedious however.

That’s where I feel real enthusiasm for feedly. As you go from blog to blog you find a lot of content that’s interesting but aside from what’s written in the comments for each post you have no idea of what others have thought or said about this. Feedly gives you a small box at the bottom right corner that tells you the number of conversations that have taken place and a quick method by which to see which are the most active references to this post. As a result you don’t need to wait for the kettle to boil to start a conversation. It’s already there.

That boiled kettle of course is Friendfeed. That’s where people will be moving next. That’s where we will find the conversation moving next. Watch the realtime thread and you can see who liked the post, who was vocal about it and when the most recent comment comes in. What this implies is that the limitations felt by twitter will become a thing of the past. We’ve got a high end solution for our content needs.

Of course we’re individuals. We all like to have our own rss feeds and personal content and that’s where google reader integration comes in. At the start and end of the day, when all those we are following are taking care of their children or walking their dogs we can go hunting for original content. We share that content and once people wake up they can comment and so the cycle continues.

Other websites are now providing more interesting options and deserve at least part of that pie.

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Feedly

Byrichard

Recently I started using feedly which is a great tool for managing rss feeds and content into an easy to view form. Connecting with google reader, friendfeed and a number of other surfaces it provides you with three principle displays for viewing the content you have selected to have aggregated.

The first display shows your content by theme. In my case these themes are social media, video, technology, explore, and of course my own content output, to some degree. From this display I can quickly see a number of topics.

The second display is named digest. It displays three of the top unread stories with the title and a quick description of the articles in each category. You can cycle through these articles using the ever popular J and K keys, j for going back, K for going forwards. A counter tells you how many items are left for each category.

The list view gives you a quick headline for every blog post. It’s a quick way to go through your rss feeds. The articles expand to their full length once they have been selected.

Above is what I think is the most interesting feature of all. It’s a demonstration of how feedly is integrated into your every day browsing. Anytime you go to a blog you’re made aware of the conversation that is taking place and how active it is. You may also share that content to a number of platforms, from google reader to friendfeed, twitter and more to add. You can add a note to explain why you think that blog post is relevant to your readers.

Of course the reason I love this application, requiring firefox, so much is that it allows for the entire world wide web to be something your share with those who are interested in where your attention is being drawn. It syncs with google reader, integrates with friendeed and just provides a great all round user experience. I strongly recommend using it.

Friendfeed has a great future

Byrichard

I really like Friendfeed and what it’s becoming. What I love is how easy it is to follow many people and converse with them about everything they share. It’s the future of web sharing but it may take several months for people to move towards it.

There are a number of things I love. First of all it aggregates your live stream in one place, so anyone who has an interest in you can share what they like about your work and you can follow this conversation. The second aspect that makes it so strong is that you can do the same for them. You can select those you think are thought leaders and follow everything they do and say. It’s mature, it’s like a web forum but grown up in that it branches out to blogs, twitter, plurk, youtube and flickr to name but a few networks.

That’s just a small part of what makes it so interesting. Something else that makes this website and service interesting is the level and depth that conversations can take. If you get a few people talking together you get a debate and a dialogue, or conversation going. This contributes to the continuation of the discussion. What’s more is that it’s less name based. You can see what FOAF (Friends of a friend) are discussing and joining in.

That’s not where it stops though. The rooms, albeit a little geeky for now will be a great place for people to come and discuss new topics, from political elections to festive events where they live and more. It’s specially designed for this. Look at the Davos room for example. RSS feeds from a variety of sources are aggregated into one place for easy digestion, especially when using the realtime feed option.

The biggest weakness of the site at the moment is user numbers. With just a few hundred passionate users the discussion means the creation of a strong community bond that has long since dissapeared (or at least changed) for Twitter.

Add Feedly to this and you’ve got one of the most interesting services yet to come out. Feedly makes it easy to share your content to many social networking websites, of which friendfeed and Google Reader are part. Read your google reader items in feedly, share them, add notes and more. It’s all synced from one place and it’s not website specific. You don’t need to be on the feedly website to use it. Just add the plugin and it works.

I look forward to welcoming you there.

The Geekiness of My Lifestyle

Byrichard

I have fun with technology which means that I spend a lot of time online as a result of which I enjoy creating online friendships. The advantage of that is that wherever I am in the world I have people to chat with, or so I thought. I am taking a break from one social network in particular because I am no longer gaining from that social network.

It was never about more than developing interesting friendships with interesting people and this was fine when I lived in a city where everyone used the site. The problem is when you move to a place where there are fewer geeks. The social media require one very important character trait for success. That the user is not stigmatized as being geeky.

This comment comes after reading facebook statususes. One person said they were online at six am, second person replied “dweeb”. Of course this is playful but below the surface that attitude is very strong within contemporary culture. Spending too much time socialising in social media labels you as a geek.

Social media will never be social whilst people still think of conversing with people online as geeky. Social networks will never be strong until people drop the stigma of being geeky and embrace a new way of doing things.

Mobile technology is evolving the right way with so many social media networks developing their services for people to carry with them at all times. For the moment business professionals have blackberries and geeks like me have a diversity of smart phones. In two to three years when smart phones become more affordable then the stigma of being social online will weaken. It’s at that point that social media will hep improve your social life, rather than run along side it.

A Proposed Social Media Deontology.

Byrichard

Article 1. I shall take interest in the projects of others before my own. In this capacity, I will pay attention to what others are doing and see how I may help them bring those projects to fruition


Article 2. I shall Participate as actively as possible in as many discussions as possible. That is to say that I will make sure to get to know the audience that is listening to me. This may include answering any and all tweets, commenting on blog posts and more


Article3. Each person shall be treated equally. The more time I offer to an individual the more time I want it to be reciprocated. If I offer to help you with your projects then the least you can do is answer my tweets, comments, and more. That is to say that I shall demonstrate that I do respect the person whom I am conversing with


Article 4. I shall not promote my work at the detriment of being social. I shall promote what I have done once for every ten comments, tweets, or blog posts I have written. In so doing I make sure that the toxicity of repetition is not too severe for those following me. This takes into consideration that whilst some people may use the aforementioned social network for just ten minutes a day three times a week others may use it all day long. As a result, I will respect the more frequent users of the social websites.


Article 5. The rule of participation. This is the rule that if I go to an event for a certain website I must have spent a certain number of hours being active on the website. Social networks are to be thought of as skiing levels with degrees of achievement. If you are new to a social network realise that when used properly the social network may be thought of as a way of life. In particular, this means that if you go to a blogger event make sure that you have read a few blog posts before coming to the event. If you come to a Seesmeetup make sure that you are with someone who has been an active participant. If you come to a tweetup don’t sign up three days before with no understanding of what the site is about.


Article 6. The attention rule. Never post to a service you are not actively monitoring. If you post to Jaiku then make sure you keep an eye on what people are doing. If you use Ping.fm and other services make sure that you have a way of being alerted when someone comments. This is because social media is about sharing. If a person responds too frequently with no acknowledgment of what they are saying then the “social” aspect of social media is devalued. In those cases, you might as well be following an RSS feed in Google reader.


Article 7. The unfollow privilege. When a social media participant feels a decline in his enjoyment of service due to how newer members are using the site then he reserves and even has the obligation to unfollow the offending party. Attention in social media is a privilege, not a right, anytime you broadcast rather than participate we reserve the right to unfollow you. This is not un-doable. If your participation changes then we may follow you back.


This was written as a result of how disappointed I am with certain people and how they use twitter. If you feel that anything should be changed then let me know. It’s meant to be dynamic.

Counting follower mass by absolute tweet number

Byrichard

Dear developers,

As the number of people on twitter increases and as people get into the thousands of followers I would like to demonstrate that those thousands of followers does not amount to much. Instead I would like to count follower mass by the absolute number of each follower, added to the number of followers.

In other words if you have ten followers with ten tweets the number would be 100. If you have 1 follower with a thousand tweets then the value would be a thousand. If you have five followers each with five thousand tweets then that would give 25,000 as a value.

The point of this application would be to demonstrate that your follower mass may not be as great as you excepcted it to be. The more active your followers the higher your value on this scale.

If you develop this application let me know 🙂 I’d love to use it.

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Re-tweeting demonstrates that twitter is broken, here’s why

Byrichard

Having used Friendfeed intensly for the last two days and through reading this post I believe that twitter is on it’s way out for early adopters for one fundamental reason. The re-tweet.

Twitter is over simplified for anything but IRC like conversation and as a result of this for passionate users such as myself we bounce from the walls of twitter without an opportunity to escape it. We see links but know nothing about them. We see retweets but don’t understand them. We get replies of which conversation they were part of and in general twitter is a two message medium.

The two message medium is the way I think best illustrates how people use twitter most of the time. Too many people worry about productivity and wasting time and because they feel guilty for having a conversation on twitter they cut it off after two messages on average. As a result the twitter user often feels that they have wasted time.

In Friendfeed however you write a message, link to an article and if people like it you see how many people, including you liked the article and you can see the comments. As an effect of seeing their comments you may exchange more messages with them. It doesn’t matter when you join the conversation because the flow is still there.

This saves so much time and technology that I am really thinking of moving away from twitter to Friendfeed because it has finally come of age and is more reflective of the way people disseminate and share information for at least a few more weeks.

Anyone else feel the same? Let me know.