Twitter announced that they were giving people the option of getting SMS notifications of @replies and “mentions”.
Unfortunately it looks like anyone who had SMS on for any type of notification was automatically opted in to receive ALL notifications.
Kinda annoying.
Twitter has a new CEO.
You can read more about it over on TheNextWeb
For a lot of people a business is known for its staff.
In the case of very small companies the staff are the company.
So if you are in business and you are using Twitter / Facebook bear that in mind. If your “personal” account is going to be associated, even indirectly, with your business account just take a moment to reflect before you post.
Reflecting does not equate with modifying or changing your personality. Personality is important.
It just means that you should think a bit before you tweet. Once you’ve posted it there is no going back.
A lot of very big companies use Twitter.
There’s an interesting article over on Social Media Today exploring how 5 such companies do it.
I posted at length over on the Blacknight Blog about some of our experiences with using social media in a business.
Any feedback would be appreciated (preferably over there!)
Twitter, in common with other social networking sites and services, has an authentication system. In Twitter’s case it’s called OAuth and it allows you, as a user, to give applications and service access to your account. For an application or service to function correctly it might need to gather information from your Twitter stream. Maybe it needs to see who you follow and who follows you etc., etc., etc.
All quite innocent and boring really.
However some applications are badly written – either intentionally or accidentally, and you can easily end up giving a 3rd party far too much acess to your account.
In the case of Twifficiency as soon as you login via OAuth it will send a “tweet” to all your followers saying:
My Twifficiency score is xx%. Whats yours? http://twifficiency.com/
So basically publicising itself.
Needless to say it doesn’t ask you before it does this nor does it give you any warning or indication that it’s about to do it, so it basically spams your followers
The developer, meanwhile, is denying he did this intentionally (you’d think he’d have checked .. .. )
So what can you, as a user, do?
Change your settings and avoid badly coded services like Twifficiency.
UPDATE: The “service” now has a checkbox on its main screen allowing people to opt out of the automated tweeting of their “score”
If you frequent the “twittersphere” or Facebook you’ll often come across businesses and their staff trying to market their products and services to you.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Of course, how they actually do it is another matter entirely …
But how successful are most of their attempts to “tap in” to “social media” and “maximise” their “potential”?
You’d have to wonder at times, especially when you look at how few “fans” or “followers” some of them actually have.
Fantasy animals, however, manage to get a reasonably respectable following..
Common Unicorn, for example, has over 1400 followers on Twitter and is listed 50 times:
Twitter Unicorn
The unicorn is eclipsed by a Squirrel, however, who has managed to attract over 13.5k followers – being listed 660 times!
Twitter Squirrel
What about Facebook?
Facebook seems to be a great place to find oddly named “groups” for just about every possible “idea” under the sun, but a Danish pineapple has managed to get over 167k fans! Not to be outdone, Germany has a pretzel with over 379k !
And we shouldn’t forget that even cats, dogs and other pets are also finding a following on Facebook…
Why do I bring this up?
Well to start with it amused me, but also it puts things into perspective. A lot of people seem to be making a lot of money from businesses that want to “tap into” social media as part of their marketing. While there is nothing exactly “wrong” with that you’d have to wonder what kind of metrics they are using to sell their services to their clientele.
If a fruit or a pretzel can get huge following on Facebook without it actually selling anything to anyone, how well can a “normal” business expect to do?
What is a measurement of their “success”?
The reality is that there probably isn’t a simple way to “measure” success. There are a lot of different factors that come into play.
But I digress..
Maybe the real “takeaway” from these rather silly examples is that they all share one thing in common – fun. They’re all frivolous fun. People use and interact with social media sites in their spare time, as well as during office hours. If you look at the kind of links people share, the pictures they post etc., you quickly realise that they don’t go to “social media” to buy or to be “sold to” or “marketed to”.
If you can instill some level of “fun” into your “presence” maybe you’ll find that you are actually more successful, though getting the balance right might not be that as easy for a business as it is for a fantasy animal.
Social Media gurus rejoiced this week with the launch of Google’s latest service – Google Buzz
Expect to see plenty of “tempting” offers in the next few weeks from “experts” on how to “maximise” your “potential” using the latest Google service.
Google Wave was meant to revolutionise the web, so Google Buzz will, of course, flatten Twitter and takeover Facebook….
Or will it?
Does anyone really care?
Social media networks; Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace etc., etc.
How many of your “friends” are actual friends? How many of them actually care about YOU?
If you’re completely caught up in the “follower count race”, then you’ve probably already entered “social media hell”.
But.
There is light at the end of the tunnel
You can disconnect.
You can reconnect with real people. I know this may sound shocking, but you could try to actually interact with a real person for a change.
Forget about vampires, random farm animals, mafia members or fantasy beasts (Twitter is infested with unicorns.. )
Removing yourself from all the social network sites takes time, so some nice person has actually automated the process – the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine does it all for you
Here’s how it works:
WEB 2.0 Suicide Machine Promotion from moddr_ on Vimeo.
So there you are. You can save yourself from social media. You can get back your REAL life.
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No matter which social networks you may choose to use you may find yourself being criticised for what you say (or don’t say).
Should you say everything that pops into your head?
What should you filter out?
How do some people find the time to “tweet” everything?
So now even cartoon characters are “using” Twitter .. maybe the end really is nigh … …
I’m not sure if one word a day would work for a lot of people, but maybe it’s better than the thousands of nonsense “tweets” that some people share every day ..
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