We Don’t Need Less Robert Scoble We Just a More Filtered and Relevant One
October 15th, 2007 by Michael Gray in Social NetworksIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Vanessa recently spoke about Twitter By Phone, Now With Default Scoble, and I agree with her it’s a problem, however what we really need to do is deal with the cause of the problem not the symptom.
The problem is the age old one facing bloggers, excessive cat blogging or in this case cat twittering. People really need to go back and get a grip on the 80/20 rule of focus originally published by Nick Wilson on Performancing. While you should go read it for those of you who are lazy, basically it says you need to keep at least 80% of your posts on topic and no more than 20% of your posts should be off topic. Not to pick on Scoble as my buddy Jason Calacanis is the same way. I may want to know what they feel about Techmeme (scoble on techmeme and calacanis on techmeme) but I don’t want to know what conversations they have with their neighbors or what movie they saw. Again I’m ok with a little personal life entering into twitter, I do it myself, but when your twitter feed loses focus, it loses relevancy, and value. I guess it comes back to the yet unsolved mixture of personal and professional information intermixing with no way to sort it. If Pamcakes wants it so does everyone else.
Lastly let’s discuss Guy Kawasaki and his twitter feed. Umm dude … your spamming … really. I want to follow you on twitter and see what you have to say, not every single item that gets auto posted from Truemors. I’m ok with people twittering when they make a blog post, see Barry Schwartz posting Daily Search Cap Roundups, but I don’t want tweets that aren’t from you directly (especially hundreds of them). What you really need is a role account for truemors, oh but nobody would probably “follow” that (and you wouldn’t get traffic from it), and Web 2.0 companies don’t get role accounts either, they think you are a spammer if you need more than one account or manage/run more than one website.
So until someone figures out the filtering of personal data, you need to decide do you want to publish “information tweets” or “cat tweets” and stick with it, cause I’m dropping the “cat” people in the next week or so …
Sphere It
October 15th, 2007 at 1:23 am
“meow”
well said! I agree and have three levels of twitter-contacts. 1) SMS: these people limit their tweets to actual interesting goings on’s. 2) web-only: more active, and less targeted (spam on frequent occasion.) 3) REMOVED: Those that were in group 2 that I booted.
At the end of the day … it’s a “pull medium” so if you don’t like Guy’s tactics, he’d say, “leave me.” You are being kind by giving him feedback because at the end of the day if the majority of his “followers” agree with you, he’ll lose.
October 15th, 2007 at 3:46 am
Gosh… I must be a retard… I just don’t get it. Why would anyone want to twitter their time away?
October 15th, 2007 at 10:37 am
I dropped Scoble weeks ago and over the weekend did some house cleaning dropping Guy, Jason and a few others. Like you said, I want to follow them, but the noise gets extreme.
I hope Guy takes the dual account recommendation. I follow both Danny Sullivan and Search Engine Land (not that either get much activity). The point is, if I like the site, I’ll follow a brand (I LOVE THE JET BLUE twitter account). If an individual is scared no one will subscribe then they need to take a hard look at the product, obviously it isn’t of a certain caliber if no one gives a damn.
Great post!
October 15th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Hmmmm…. I found that folks who signed up for Twitter want personal stuff. a little more real time (i.e. “what am I doing now…”).
Also, I’m not “publishing” Twitter (or my blog) for the audience really… I publish it for myself. So, I see personal blogs/twitters as sort of a take it or leave it thing. to change it would be to change your live.
that being said, maybe Twitter should put a flag that says friends/family/business and folks would sign up for which ones they want.
October 15th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
FYI, my Twitter account does not contain all Truemors posts. Roughly 10-20% get passed through. Specifically, the Odd and Science categories, plus some that are hand selected for Twitter.
Guy
October 15th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
@Jason - I’m curious about your reason for using Twitter. It’s inherently supposed to connect you with others, so publishing for yourself is breaking the mold. If I wanted to document my day, I would use a diary, not a social network.
@Guy - Is the 10-20% figure for Truemors posts or your posts on Twitter? After following you for weeks, it feels like 10-20% of the former. My biggest annoyance was that very few of the stories were new. In fact, I had already seen them two to three days earlier on Digg. It felt like cheap regurgitation from a better source. To Michael’s point, I don’t care about Truemors, I wanted to follow YOU.
I think the concern is we hold certain individuals at a particular level of authority and respect. Scoble, Jason and you each have instant credibility, which is in actuality being cheapened when we see sub-standard twits. I want to relate to my friends over their days, but when I choose to follow you, I’m trying to get insight into some of the industry’s greatest minds. If you want to make this a take it or leave it buffet then you will be sacrificing quality readers.
October 16th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
I like Robert. I say that because I’m about to say things he wont like, and want to take at least some of the sting out — He needs to take a break. I had to unsubscribe from both his blog and twitter accounts months back, because he’s just too much.
Having said that. Im absolutely positive that some people love him for just those reasons, so really, it’s ok. Isn’t it?
As for twitter, well i once said a successful twitter account would focus on tight, niche oriented link streams.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
October 17th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Rhea,
If you’ve seen most of the truemors 2 or 3 days earlier, I would like to hire you.
Guy
October 17th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Guy, Sounds terrific, when do I start?! =)