Apart from all the self-proclaimed experts that want to “cash in” on their superior skills, you’ve also got to contend with those who take it all a little too seriously.
Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or even Bebo, you’ll nearly always find people who take it all oh so seriously.
There is a lighter side to it all …
Via Mashable
Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook or simply a blog people sometimes forget that their audience is fickle.
If you spend too much time and energy “planning” and making grandiose promises of “things to come” will anyone really care or notice?
With Facebook “pages” there is little to be gained from putting up a “holding page” – you can simply choose not to make your page public, so you can tweak settings and layout privately.
With Twitter, however, it’s not that evident. Granted, you could choose to “protect” your updates, but you wouldn’t be able to hide your profile page and if you plan on using Twitter for your business “protection” may seem odd.
There has been plenty written about what Twitter is and isn’t, but ultimately if you don’t actually use it nobody will either notice or care.
Of course, conversely speaking, if you used it badly people would notice and probably criticise you …
However if your business’ Twitter status is frozen with a “coming soon” style tweet, then maybe you’ve really misunderstood the medium completely. A blank account would probably seem saner.
Whether it’s technology or life in general you’ll always run into people doing odd things. When you ask them why they did it they’ll simply reply:
“Because I could”
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that it’s either a good idea or even advisable.
Take Twitter (again!)
Using a 3rd party service you can automate a lot of things. So when someone new follows your user you can send your new “fan” a message.
Unfortunately most people don’t know how to use this kind of service properly and end up simply abusing it.
Spammers send you affiliate links and general rubbish that you could live without.
What about Ireland.com?
You’d think that a company of their size would have more sense, but they obviously still don’t “get” Twitter.
Their Twitter account sent me this useless rubbish at around 6am this morning a few hours after I “followed” them:
“Thanks for following www.Ireland.com we are always interested in Real stories from Real people passionate about Ireland – Why not share you views – Or visit the site for News, Sport, Gigs, Email, TV, Booking Hotels, etc”
Considering the amount of automated spammy messages I get my only reaction to this is – unfollow immediately. It leaves me wondering if Ireland.com have any semblance of a clue about how to use Twitter.
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Companies have embraced Twitter (or at least tried to).
You’ll find companies of all shapes and sizes attempting to get to grips with the new medium.
Unfortunately not all interactions will work out well for people, but they can always try again.
But one thing people need to remember is that Twitter is very public. It is not private.
If you wouldn’t feel comfortable discussing certain details in public, then why would you do it on Twitter?
Even if you felt comfortable talking about things it may not be appropriate to do so. So while it’s fine to give and discuss general things, would you really want a supplier discussing your account’s finances?
I know how I’d feel about that….
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Twitter maybe a wonderful way to spread news, but it can be completely inaccurate..
Jeff Goldblum, for example, has been reported dead several times over the last few weeks.
At least Goldblum has a sense of humour:
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Jeff Goldblum Will Be Missed | ||||
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Today marks the day that Twitter “apocalypse” is upon us.
You can read more about it here.
Looks like most of the main stream Twitter clients updated to deal with the anomaly (or had already coded around it)
Remember the Y2K bug? Remember how it was meant to mean the end of civilisation?
We’re still here …
Funny that.
Remember all the “wonderful” messages you used to get on Facebook? “You’ve been bitten by a vampire” etc., etc.,
They may have been fun if you were a twelve year old, but if you spend any length of time online these kind of interruptions just become annoying.
Now over on Twitter the same kind of thing happens.
This time round the latest annoyance is called SpyMaster, which is supposedly in “private beta”.
In typical web 2.0 fluffy language they’ve got the worst kept secret in Twitterville. Not only does everyone know about it, but they’ve also setup their application in such a way that it spams thousands of other Twitter users via “direct message”!
End result – not only has the application managed to alienate potential users, but it’s also managed to upset thousands of users who weren’t even playing the game.
You can see all the “tweets” from people playing and people complaining about the game here
Moral of the story – don’t annoy people
So you heard on the “grapevine” that lots of business were using Twitter to promote themselves. You read a couple of articles on well known sites or maybe in your favourite newspaper.
Armed with your new knowledge you signed up for a Twitter account.
30 seconds later you entered the fray.
You had a “Twitter page”! Success!
Now to start making money…
So you “followed” Scoble, cos he’s visible and then you followed another 1000 more Twitter users. Some of them even followed you back!
Now you had an audience!
Maybe you’d even read about using Twitter’s search tools, so you keyed in a few terms related to your business and found even more people to follow.
And now you start blasting your sales message at everyone.
Your product was amazing, so you simply had to tell everyone about it, so you kept shouting about it to all and sundry.
Days go by and you’re following more and more people, but nobody is following you back…
You had failed!
Why?