Less Spamming News Retweeting and Share with Me an Original Idea of Who You Really Are and Think!

You make me chuckle Mr Voss. 'RT my stuff'… 'Don't RT my stuff'… you're funny.

Interesting vid. Have a couple of thoughts. First off, I'm starting to think there are two or more distinct Twitter experiences. Obviously, there are thousands of different nuances to Twitter, but there are a couple of BIG differences. To over-simplify it… Twitter's different when you're small. It's not necessarily worse either.

If you've got a few hundred followers and you follow a small collection of celebrities (who won't be mindlessly retweeting each other because they're too high profile for that) and some relative newbies, the high profile tweets that you retweet feel like adding value. In other words, you're sharing 'important' stuff with your peers. They share stuff back. You're all helping each other. None of you is seeing all the retweets magnified over and over, because you only follow a few hundred people. It's a shared and mutually beneficial experience.

Not really explaining this well. Bear with me… I'm going to try for a fish-related analogy or three. *Warms brain muscles*

Remember when you started on Twitter and you could easily read every tweet in the timeline? There are thousands – maybe millions – of people on Twitter doing just that. While the major whales are doing well if they read a % of their @ messages, the small fish read EVERYTHING. Every single tweet and DM. That's why they think you're spamming them. Some of them feel they should reply to every single tweet too. If they can't think of a reply, they just retweet it.

Tweets are plankton. When you arrive on Twitter, you eat all the plankton. When you're a big Twitter whale, you don't even see the plankton. You don't see individual small fish either – unless they're those grooming fish who pick gunk off your face – what you do notice though, are the shoals of fish all hanging together and doing the same thing to try to take possession of the plankton. I'm going to give the analogy a rest there or you'll end up eating all the Twitter newbies, and it'll be a blood-bath. You get my drift though? The random tweets have a different meaning depending on how big you are. One final 'shoal' related comment though – look up how and why shoals behave the way they do. This is why Twitter is called Twitter. The swarm activity would not happen unless the majority of people here felt insignificant. People want to be identified with a group. Swarm/shoal/flock behaviour is about not differentiating yourself too much. You all tweet the same way as part of a flock.

One last analogy and I'm off for a cuppa. Fish again. Well… whales. They get toxic. I went whale watching once and they said whales are treated as toxic waste when they die because the toxins of each of the fish combine over and over so the level within a whale – who eats so many fish, fish that eat fish, and animals that eat fish that eat fish – is massive. I think the same's true on Twitter. When you see the same tweets over and over and over and over again, it's pretty hard to stay fresh as a daisy about the subject when someone @ messages for your opinion. The consequence is that they think you don't care, aren't interested or – worse – aren't interestING. I've seen this happen time and again to big celebrities. Stephen Fry has a horrible time with it. Sometimes I throw his name into the Twitter search just to see what his @ messages look like. Enough to give anyone a sense of humour failure or, at the very least, make the Twitter experience a bit toxic. For the most part, the whales do all the heavy lifting – can't think of an aquatic metaphor. Might have to duck (pun) back to the bird analogy briefly. The big players are the owls – they have to make loads of noise all on their own. It has to carry, and mean something, as a solitary voice. Each member of a flock, however, need only tweet a tiny tweet – even an identical one – to be part of something loud. They think you are spamming because your voice is loud for one person. You think they are spamming because they have no voice of their own so they rely on replication. Neither side has an attitude problem, but both might have a perception problem.

To sum up, the idea that social media in general – and Twitter in particular – unites us all in a common experience of co-existing shared existence is… um… bull crap. The perspective at each level of the food chain is different. Those at the earlier stages are having the most 'human' experience because – in evolutionary terms – a network of a few hundred is a reasonable 'human-shaped' network. Twitter expands our connections beyond that for which we are evolutionarily equipped. Those at the top can't continue to engage in the same way. They have to broadcast (for sanity and practical reasons). Those at the bottom come in with the belief that we're all equal now. They expect celebrities to treat them as equals, and feel gutted (fish pun) when they don't/can't. Fun here, ain't it?

I wrote this about the 'human-shapedness' of Twitter – http://bit.ly/yes-I-sleep
and this is a funny vid about celebs and Twitter – http://bit.ly/9M0FSb

Loving your work,

Rebecca.

Thanks. It's just a bunch of theories I haven't quite sussed out yet, but you were encouraging contribution so I thought I'd chime in. Hope a bunch more people do the same. It's an interesting vid.

Chris I joined Twitter just about a year ago, and what you want out of tweeters is how I remember Twitter to be in the beginning. Seems to me ever since Twitter added its RT button all the problems started.
In the beginning, it was my understanding that a RT was for the purpose of sharing a tweet you like with your followers, but also adding to the original tweet, thereby revealing some of the Re-Tweeter's personality through the embellishment. But that retweet button took that social aspect out of the equation. It's too easy to just hit the button, than to do a manual re-tweet and think of something to say to add to the conversation.
Blame lies at the feet of that button. Especially for newbies who probably don't even know how to do a manual re-tweet, because they never had to learn. If I can sort of borrow Rebecca's analogy, Give a man a re-tweet and he meaninglessly re-tweets (over and over) for a day. Teach a man to re-tweet and he re-tweets with quality for a lifetime

My point is dont just tweet a majority of your tweets as the same news
items. Share with me some great blogs about your ideas. I dont mind if
people retweet my stuff, its original material and 50 trillion people arent
going to retweet it. I look at news items I want to retweet and judge
whether enough people have over tweeted that story. But the real slant I
have is share original stuff that from yourselves.

Thanks

Chris

Chris,

I almost literally fell on the floor laughing when you showed that Talking Carl iPhone app. I will have to download that.

I like your point about how even an uninteresting original idea can be turned into something great when shared with others. I think we all have the feeling that our ideas must be the great and fully flushed out, but imagine how much in the world would be missing if we all held back until that happened. Sometimes, in fact a lot of the time, our ideas require us to share them and mesh them with other people's ideas to create that really great thought.

Brad

Wow! I really liked your tip of the day. There's a blog post or two that's whirling around in my head just from reading it. You mind if I borrow your tip?

Very true about the RT button on Twitter = I don't care for it either! It took a while for me to learn about how to do an RT manually when I first joined. I do prefer to add some value when it fits and when I can!
RT's are one thing and I guess it's a function of how many people actually read their streams closely (like the note telling you how often something's been rt'd… but tweeting the same thing over and over is frustrating too Chris! There are a number of people who are guilty of loading their automated tweeting server to the hilt and so I find I can't escape to a quieter time when the traffic might be less repetitive. A point of view you may not see, as Rebecca explains. Tweeps who follow you Chris – the ones who only follow a few hundred folks in total can get overloaded by your tweets, and tweets by others with a similar bent – and it does appear like spamming when it's the same stuff over and over, or re-worded and pointing to the same thing.
I haven't even watched your video yet – don't have the time right now – that's another point = too bad you don't do transcripts so people have an option to read what you're saying – not everyone has the patience to stop and watch another *&%^#$ing video! …is it the same boring background and a mug that doesn't match the profile… yawn – give me some reading material to help me dream the big dreams!

Maybe it is just my twitter stream and maybe I should make a conscious effort to “prune” it but it seems that twitter has become a river of noise. I remember the good old days when there was a lot less spamming and selling and a lot more asking of questions.

Twitter could be an amazing place to connect with others of like mind and get honest feedback on ideas and thoughts.

Too give you an example of what I mean… Today I sent out a tweet to my stream (10k followers) and all I said was… does anybody need a friend today? A year ago that would have sparked 15 replies and started 5 or 6 meaningful relationships.

Today… I got 0 replies, it just got lost in the stream of auto-tweets and sales messages. I would love for twitter to ban the sales pitches and let twitter get back to being a community… a community where we can connect with others of like mind, of differing perspectives, and of untapped knowledge.

Love this concept! (love that APP your featured, too-lol) but best thing is what you're saying about sharing what's REAL.

Here's mine, right now:
“Someone you're in a relationship with says,
“When I say I'm going to be there @ a certain time, just factor in an extra two hours”. U say in a loving way that whatevr time they need is fine, just plz communicate that something changed or that theyre going to be late, instead of leaving U there wondering for hour & a half (as they often do). Then they make U wrong 4 expressing what U need. Do U adapt or do U let go of this person in yr life?”
<<< So this caused quite a fascinating thread on my Facebook (and is a real issue I'm exploring and am faced with).
A) What's YOUR take on that, Chris?
B) I applaud your appeal for sharing real slices of life not just RTing or static 'tweets', etc. Thanks so much! @lynnrose

Hi Chris. I'm entering my last year of college as a journalism/PR major. I've been doing a lot of reading, but I'm finding it hard to come up with my own ideas to share because I'm still fairly early into the process. Do you have any advice for a student like me?

I disagree Chris. You don’t post “stupid crap” on your blog. I am not one to just go down your list & hit that “Retweet” button. When I see something that interests me I click on it. I retweet them because I feel my followers will find them useful. (Like I did this one) In fact last night, one of my followers decided to follow you from the retweets I did from your page.

I try to post up to date news instead of retweeting old news. Posting my own stuff will bring conversation to me..where the retweet function doesn’t.

Alot of times I end up having to use the retweet button because people are putting too many characters in their posts. Then there are other times where my stream is so busy that I find myself having to retweet. I’m trying to break myself of that. I’ve found the retweet button has taken me to twitter jail a few times. lol

I couldn’t agree more.

The main thing is I want to suggest people contribute more original thought
and less RTing.

I love your posts and your Facebook stuff… I’m learning so much on Twitter, and I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to get out here!

I have passion for developing leaders, and I’m convinced of this one thing…

THE BEST LEADERS ARE THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN PERSONALLY MENTORED, PREFERABLY ONE ON ONE.

It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, or how large your sphere of influence is. The best leaders have one thing in common… A MENTOR.

It really is that simple. That means if YOU are a LEADER, you have a responsibility to be a MENTOR to others… not just lead them, push them, use them or boss them… but to multiply in THEM the gifts, passions, skills and dreams that already lie within them, and to help them to discover and develop new ones as well.

I’ve seen it in my own life and in the lives of countless others. I appreciate it when someone like you takes an interest in the ideas of others!