Friending everyone you meet – what’s up with that?

Not so long ago, social networks were pretty straightforward:  MySpace & Facebook were for friends, Linkedin for business contacts, and a bunch of others for everything in between.  If you met somebody (online or off) that you got on with you connected with them on one of the first two, if you met somebody you were doing business with and liked (or wanted to) you connected with them on the latter.  They were, in one way or another, qualified contacts.  Seems like in the last year or so particularly, the boundries between them all have gotten blurred.  I’ve had facebook ‘friend’ requests from people whose name I don’t know, or whose face I don’t recognise.  Met them once, was on a conference call or in a meeting… exchanged cards at a conference.

Twitter self-polices in a way, in that if you’re following somebody who drives you crazy, you’ll quickly unfollow or ignore them.  Part of the beauty of Twitter is that it’s a great way to connect with folks you didn’t know previously. That’ll be the subject of a different post though…

My point is that connections run the risk of losing value.  If you connect with everyone you meet on linkedin, how valuable is that connection to you or your network?  If you can’t vouch for that person personally, is the fact that you’re linked of any worth?

Personally I try to only connect only with people I consider to be friends, or folks who I like  or liked working with and respect.  There’s a good deal of crossover between Facebook and Linkedin for me within those two groups (a different issue), but the same rules apply.

What do Web services like Facebook & Twitter owe their users?

There’s been lots of noise recently around Web services and their relationships with their users. Facebook users were up in arms about the recent privacy policy changes (since rescinded), there’s increasing noise about the customer service (or lack thereof) from Twitter. Facebook’s redesign has caused an extraordinary backlash: you’d think some of these folks had been personally assaulted, such is their anger. Gmail  goes down for 15 minutes, and it’s like the world has ended.

Gmail, like the others above, is free for non-enterprise users.

That’s the key point when looking at these complaints: these services are all free.  So, just as users of Google’s free analytics product have much less right to complain than those of the higher end and more fully featured (but paid) Omniture Site Catalyst, the real question is whether  it’s reasonable to expect a certain level of service or % of uptime when you’re not paying for a product?

If you’re getting something for free you have to take it as it comes to some extent, but in truth it’s more complex than that.  Long term each of these services will look to generate revenue from their users in some capacity (some like Gmail already are); whether through subscriptions, advertising, sponsorship or some other stream.  To succeed, they need a happy and active user base. Ignoring their users’ complaints at this stage could damage them long term: the Web is littered with the carcasses of services that ignored their users.

You could reasonably argue that Twitter users have no right to complain about not getting a level of service they are not contractually entitled to, but in order for it  to succeed, they need to keep users happy so they don’t go elsewhere. The road to that success starts with listening to their users’  complaints. The customer is always right, even when it comes to free services.

Interesting thoughts on this over at the Social Media Club. It’s their question of the week. Where do you stand?  Are folks being reasonable in complaining, or does the fact they’re not paying for the service mean they have to accept whatever level of service they receive?

Twitter: To Auto DM/Auto Follow or Not?

Twitter is suddenly really popular.  Had you noticed?  Everybody from Shaq to my mom (true story) is on there now. As with anything that becomes popular, the level of noise has increased dramatically.  Lots of folks trying to tell you how to get rich quick, or share awesome marketing secrets with you.  Don’t know about you, but I’ve had my fill of awesome marketing secrets.  I like Twitter because it sparks conversations:  I connect with people I find interesting. I goof around a bit, I network a bit, I share bits and pieces of my life (personal and professional), and vice versa. Above all though it’s authentic:  there are real people on the end of the tweets.

And so to the issue of Auto DMs.  For those that don’t know, a DM is a “Direct Message”,  a Twitter message that goes only to one person (i.e. is not visible on the public stream).  Kindof like a mini email sent just to you.  There are sites out there that will let you send one automatically, meaning that if I follow you on Twitter, the site recognizes that and automatically sends you a message.

They’ve been quite a hot topic on Twitter lately, with a lot of folks on there having a pretty vehement dislike of them, myself included. The reasoning is that Twitter is a very personal, conversation driven platform, so ‘faking it’ by sending an automatic canned message (e.g ‘thank you for following me, looking forward to connecting with you’) is disengenuous.  Much better to send a personal message (either DM or @) when the mood takes you, rather than automating it.  After all, how interested in me are you if you’re sending me the exact same message you send everyone else who follows you?  I’ve gotten auto DMs with broken links in them (great promotion, huh?), and ones with too much text that just cut off mid sentence.  Those ones make me feel really special.

I feel the same way about auto-following folks.  You can use those same applications to recognize when somebody has followed you, and immediately recipricate. Again, there’s no value here:  I want you to follow me because you’re interested/engaged/amused by what I have to say, not as a de facto, tit for tat thing.  If you automatically follow me because I’ve followed you, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Follow me because I’m interesting, not to return a favor.

Full disclosure here:  I briefly used an auto responder out of laziness for a while on @kaimoviereviews – all it said was ‘thanks for following, I take requests’ – figured I should let people know they could ask me to review movies, but after giving it a little more thought I realized that if they were interested enough to follow, they’d be interested enough to read my profile or click the link (or DM/@ me) and find out for themselves.

So what’s your take on the automation thing.  Big deal, or not so much?  Do  yo u follow everyone who follows you, or are you more selective?

@kaimac
@kaimoviereviews 

Plane Crash-lands Into Hudson – Twitter First, Again

This afternoon a plane crashed into the Hudson.  In itself a pretty extraordinary event.  What was especially extraordinary to me was that the story broke on Twitter.  No grey area, no arguments:  the first reports of this event were on Twitter. I was at home when it happened, with CNN on in the background.  Folks tweeted about it a good 10 minutes before it appeared on CNN, and a good 20 minutes before it appeared on online news channels.  Somebody posted a picture of the plane in the water mere minutes after the crash: http://ad.vu/2hrc

Absolutely extraordinary.

I did a quick straw poll (admittedly on Twitter, so somewhat skewed), that said that 40% of folks who heard about the crash heard about it on Twitter.  Think about that for a second, that’s absolutely nuts.  Before radio, before tv, before any other news source:  Twitter broke the news.  You and I, and others on Twitter…. beat the major, international news orgs to the news.

I think we’ll see more and more of this moving forward.  Normal folks like you and I breaking the news, citizen journalists.  Interesting to watch, and interesting to see how the news networks react to it.

CNN, Stephen Fry, Britney… Twitter has landed (in case you hadn’t noticed)

Twitter is everywhere nowadays.  CNN anchors advertise their twitter accounts live on air and interact with their viewers, Stephen Fry is twittering his way around Africa, and even lil old Britney has got in on the act. It has well and truly landed.  Pretty amazing that in just two years it’s gone from an oddity that most people didn’t really get, to almost an institution.

I’ll write more about what people are doing with Twitter over coming weeks.  In the meantime, here’s a snapshow of following/followers for each of the above:

ricksanchezcnn:  following 17910  followers 27323

stephenfry: following 10096 followers 10140

therealbritney: following 1561 followers 5374

What does the above tell you?  That Stephen Fry really gets it.  He should be CTO of the world, obviously.  And that Britney needs to show her fans some love.  And that loads of people watch CNN.