It's Friday, and the #followfriday phenomenon kicks in on Twitter. The idea is that you post a message with this tag suggesting Tweets that other people might want to follow. I watched this happen (search on #followfriday) and there are hundreds coming in each minute. I recommended @cherrymorello - I've no idea who she is but she writes some very funny, subversive posts which always make me smile.
Some subversive political microblogging now: this is the fuss over US Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra's bizarre claim on Twitter comparing his lobbying with the revolutionary turmoil in Iran. Thousands are now posting ironic comments to @petehoekstra making him the Twitter phenomenon of the week - indeed a meme. Many of these are very witty.@petehoekstra. Examples include
- teacher forgot to take my attendance today and thought I wasn't there, similar to being the loch ness monster.
- I got a splinter in my hand today. Felt just like Jesus getting nailed to the cross.
- I skipped breakfeat, so now I know what it's like to die of hunger!
- Under the Tories The Secret Millionaire will star all of the Cabinet members
- Under the Tories Dragons Den will be an endless line of small businessmen being told to f*** off by George Osborne
- Under the Tories I’m a Celebrity… will be a recruiting drive for MP’s
- Under the Tories Britain’s Got Talent, but it will be available for sale to the highest bidder
18 June 2009
Political microblogging
President Obama's Twitter pages today refer to an episode on a current TV show involving behind the scenes and head-shaving. Interesting in two ways: a) his PRs realize that to work the feeds have to be interesting / fun / wacky; b) it links to the movie on FaceBook; c) it recognizes that it has to offer exclusivity (which adds to the coolness). OK, that's 3 interesting aspects, I know.
Followers and Following
Yesterday I reached a milestone - 100 followers (as it happens it was something like @englishpubsandbars. Strange thing is that now they've gone. And I've noticed others coming off the follower roll - which I assumed was Twitter deleting bogus accounts. I wonder now if what is happening is Tweeters clicking to 'follow' you; but when you don't reciprocate, they delete you.
Twitter metrics
I've been looking at Tweetsum following a post on Twitter. It looks impressive and allows you to rate the quality of people you are following and who are being followed - I think. With some playing about, I believe that the algorithm can be manipulated - basically the more you reduce the people you are following the better your score. In other words if you just talk at people instead of listening at the same time you are going to get a better score.
17 June 2009
Building traffic on Twitter
I'm being followed on Twitter by @ironicapricot. This is a student of classical music, a soprano, based in Chicago. She seems to have gained nearly 500 followers in less than a week. How has she done this? There doesn't seem to be a great deal of content to this micro-blog, but the purpose may be to drive traffic to the main blog (also called ironicapricot on Blogger). If so the exercise doesn't seem to have worked as there are only 12 followers (including me). The blog looks really interesting - a daily essay on a classical song.
So what is the strategy? It looks like what ironic apricot is doing is building a Twitter following very quickly by following large number of other random people: she is following nearly 2000 people, of whom about a quarter have responded by reciprocating.
Revenue from blogging
Now I see that Blogger suggests I can Monetise my blog, being paid by Google for allowing customized, targeted advertising on my pages. Then there would be a great incentive to build traffic to the blog. A good incentive to write something powerful and engaging, instead of these random postings.
But what about the ethics? As an educator I can't do this. I can't talk about my blog and encourage my students to visit it if I have a financial incentive to do so. A whole interesting topic, though which I will pursue with other new media applications.
Pretty much most of what I am reading in national newspapers these days could be described as a paper-based 'blog' - containing opinion, analysis, speculation, thought and good writing (sometimes). I'm not sure how long I will be prepared to keep paying out for Sunday newspapers.
Twitter Creativity
The 140 character limit presents a challenge. Write something, then go back and edit it down. Take out verbs, articles... starts sounding like Tony Blair. Worse still it is compromising the style of other things I write.
I am following several witty and engaging Twitterers (such as @cherrymorello and @sybalena) who are using the medium to tell a good story. At the same time some commercial organizations I am following haven't figured out the basic storytelling rules of PR: telling the world that there are only 10 weeks to go until your festival is not exactly setting the microblogosphere alight.
Twitter useability
The ability to hold a conversation is restricted as there is no direct thread. I had a comment from a follower last week saying "Where are they?" "Where are what?" I thought. Completely confused I had to go back through all my Tweets to figure out what he was replying to.
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