Twitter: Friend And Foe

Media outlets use it, and get scooped by it

By David Tanklefsky -- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/10/2009 2:00:00 AM EDT

Twitter ruffled a few more journalistic feathers this week when American Idol judge Paula Abdul became the latest household name to usurp the breaking news power of traditional media by making a big announcement on the social networking site.

“I think it's kind of a watershed moment,” says Rob Silverstein, executive producer for Access Hollywood. “The biggest show in the history of television; one of the biggest stars of the show decides to leave via Twitter.”

Abdul's scoop came on the heels of the July 27 announcement that Ben Silverman would be departing NBC. The news broke via the Twitter page of Silverman's good friend Ryan Seacrest, who alerted his 2 million followers well ahead of an NBC press release.

“It's the democratization of media,” says Brad Adgate, senior VP of research for Horizon Media. “This is just going to continue. You follow Paula [on Twitter], you knew she was leaving before it was announced.”

While programming executives at the newsmagazines told B&C they don't think Twitter will make their shows obsolete, it's clear the social media tool is putting them on edge. But they hope it will actually help in the end.

“I think it's great when celebrities break stories on Twitter,” said Entertainment Tonight Executive Producer Linda Bell Blue. “What we have found is [our] viewers are watching Twitter all day long...All it does is whet the appetite for viewers to come to us to get the full story.”

Shari Anne Brill, senior VP and programming director for ad buyer Carat, agrees that Twitter is enabling celebrities to get news out without the shows that pander to them (“They can pander all on their own,” she quips). But she believes there are still entertainment news consumers who haven't heard a chirp about Twitter.

“A lot of people who are not in [the media] business don't seem to understand why it exists,” Brill says. “They just can't grasp it. Those who work in the media or who are interested in media, they get it.”

TV companies and programming execs are also finding themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to balance their social networking footprint, which drives viewers to their shows, with controlling the message of the company.

Last week ESPN sent out “Social Media Guidelines” for employees, which were quickly maligned by some of the network's personalities (a “Taliban-like decree,” Kenny Mayne tweeted). “ESPN understands that employees may maintain or contribute to personal blogs, message boards, conversation pages, and other forms of social media such as Facebook and Twitter,” the memo stated. “If an employee posts ESPN or job-related information, they are required to exercise good judgment [and] abide by ESPN policy.” —With additional reporting by Marisa Guthrie

Tweet As the Real Twitterers Do

By Chris Crum - Thu, 07/09/2009 - 14:53

Too Many Tweets Can Be Bad For All Parties

Some people tweet a lot. I follow a good deal of them. Sometimes excessive tweeting can include plenty of wisdom. Often times, however, it is just annoying. Chances are that if you follow somebody, you do care what they have to say, at least to some extent. If they tweet too much though, you may find yourself caring less, and you may even decide to unfollow them. Do you unfollow people who tweet too much? Tell us.

Excessive tweeting is at the root of more than one of Twitter's problems.

The Retention Problem

Twitter has been known to have trouble with user retention. People sign up and abandon their accounts. A common complaint about Twitter is that it contains too much "noise." In other words, there are too many random tweets that nobody cares about.

I've always found it a bit naive to assume that just because you find a tweet useless, it is useless to everybody. I've long considered that you control who you follow, so if you don't like somebody's tweeting, you have the power to stop following them.

This is still true, but perhaps it is more complex than that. I may want to follow @soandso (I'm only using this as an example) because I know that they will say things that I need to know sometimes, but @soandso may also flood my Twitter stream with useless conversation that I have no interest in - noise.

If that noise gets to become to much of an issue, I will likely end up deciding to unfolllow @soandso anyway, and try to obtain the info from somewhere else - somewhere that is less annoying.

The lesson here (from the business perspective) is that if you want to keep followers, you should probably limit your tweeting. That's not to say that every Tweet has to be incredibly important. Just think before you Tweet, and keep your audience in mind.

The Capacity Problem

By tweeting too frequently, you may actually be hurting Twitter's accessibility. Interestingly enough, while I was researching this article, I encountered the "Twitter is over capacity" error message a couple times (one with and one without the Fail Whale), which if you'll notice in the illustrations below, is accompanied by "Too many Tweets! Please wait a moment and try again."

If Twitter's not operating properly, it's not going to do anybody any good until it comes back. If you're tweeting too much, you're contributing to the problem. Twitter does limit the number of tweets you post in a day.

"We do cap the number of updates a user can make in a 24 hour period, whether via the API or any other input method (web, mobile, etc.)," said Alex Payne, Twitter's API Lead in a Google Groups conversation back in January. "Right now, that number is 1000, but it's subject to change at any time. "

I am awaiting confirmation on whether or not this is still the number, but whether it has changed or not, Twitter may reduce it more still, considering the capacity issue. If Twitter wants to keep growing, this has to be a turn off (despite all of the charm of the Fail Whale).

Tweet How the Real Twitterers Tweet

I thought it would be interesting to see how frequently the people who actually run Twitter tweet themselves. As far as I can tell, the frequency isn't too high. They tweet often, but not excessively. I browsed the last month or so worth of tweets from the following list of Twitter staffers (hat tip to Twittercism who has a huge list of Twitterers), and they all pretty much kept it to 20 tweets a day or less (5 or less or 3 or less in some cases, most were under 10).

10 of the People Behind Twitter

1. Evan Williams (@ev) - Twitter CEO

2. Biz Stone (@biz) Twitter Co-founder

3. Abdur Chowdhury (@abdur) - Twitter's "Chief Scientist"

4. Alex Payne (@al3x) - Twitter's API Lead

5. Crystal (@crystal) - leads twitter support team

6. Eric Jensen (@ej) - Co-founded Summize (Twitter Search) - search and text mining technologist

7. Greg Pass (@gregpass) - Director of Engineering and Ops

8. Jason Goldman (@goldman) - Director of product strategy

9. John Adams (@netik) - operations engineer

10. Rudy Winnacker (@ronpepsi) - operations engineer

I have to wonder if Twitter employees have a limit in place for themselves. Of course they know what happens when there are too many tweets. No point in creating more work for yourself.

Can You Tweet Too Little?

Depending on what your goals are for using Twitter, I would say that it is possible to tweet too little. If you are using it for business purposes, then a lack of updates could reflect poorly on your effort to stay in touch with your followers.

As long as you're not completely dead on Twitter for months at a time, you'll probably be ok though. In fact, I don't consider myself a very frequent tweeter. There is just as much (if not more) to gain from Twitter by absorbing the content that is coming in, than there is by pushing content out.

The Moral of the Story

Your Twitter frequency should be dictated by you goals. That said, you do not want to overdo it. You may lose followers from a lack of updating, but I would think you would be more likely to lose them when you update too much. Use moderation. Use other channels of communication when applicable. Use direct messages for one on one conversation.

What are your thoughts on overtweeting? Undertweeting? Discuss with WebProNews readers.

¿Está cambiando la medida de la popularidad en la web? Backtype tweetcount

By dreig | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

No sé qué va a ser del Page Rank, del Alexarank o del ya muy mermado Technorati, como del resto de los ránkings que se basan, como criterio fundamental en el número de enlaces entrantes a un espacio para determinar su popularidad, pero leer a Louis Gray me confirmaba algo que muchos defendemos desde hace tiempo:

Twitter amenaza a muchas de las cosas que dábamos por sentadas en la red. Así , se confirma la disminución de la tendencia a enlazar en favor del incremento del fenómeno Retweet (RT).

Quizás el tema vaya en la línea del aumento de la “continuous augmented awareness” (conciencia contínua aumentada, escribiremos en breve sobre ello), que incluye una idea que también quiero reflejar aquí:

Que cada vez somos menos dados a creer (y sellar con enlaces) en meritocracias (poder derivado del mérito que atribuimos a unos pocos) y más a premiar de forma leve, puntual pero efectiva, el trabajo que valoramos y nos gusta de todos (democracia).

Dicho de otro modo, la disponibilidad del conocimiento, el aumento de nuestro sentido crítico nos convierte en menos mitómanos, menos necesidades de autoridades que nos digan lo que es correcto o no leer u opinar.

Veremos cómo se adaptan los índices, las analíticas de popularidad, las corrientes de pensamiento sobre internet a este tipo de fenómenos de reinvención por parte del usuario, pero quería presentaros, de momento, una nueva característica en este blog: el botón de retweet de Backtype.

Lo he cambiado por el de Tweetmeme (lo revisamos aquí), después de haber constatado y leído sobre múltiples fallos. No ocurre con el botón que véis a la izquierda de esta entrada: Backtype tweetcount, que añade al anterior algunas funcionalidades más, como la personalización en colores.

Aunque Tweetmeme recoge posibilidades interesantes como las que se muestran en el gráfico (contabilización global de retweets, analíticas globales) repito que su defecto al no contabilizar de forma fidedigna los RT limita su utilidad.

No creo, que Backtype tarde, de todos modos, en ofrecer posibilidades similares.

Si queréis instalar el botón, podéis hacerlo descargando el plugin para Wordpress desde aquí, o el script que encontraréis en este otro enlace.

Tendencias en el uso de smartphones y de Twitter

Enviado por Michael Mace el 4 mayo, 2009 - 05:58Comentar

En Rubicon acabamos de llevar a cabo una encuesta rápida entre consumidores sobre un par de temas candentes en el sector de la tecnología: la adopción de teléfonos avanzados y el uso de Twitter. Me ha parecido interesante ofrecerles un resumen de los resultados, así como los enlaces a los artículos completos.

En cuando a adopción de smartphones, gana RIM. En los Estados Unidos, alrededor del 10%-11% de la población adulta utiliza teléfonos avanzados. RIM tiene poco menos de la mitad del parque instalado, seguida por Apple con más o menos la cuarta parte.

Los usuarios de los diferentes tipos de smartphone tienen prioridades distintas en cuanto a las funciones. Los usuarios del iPhone consideran la navegación web como su prioridad número uno, seguida de cerca por el correo-e. Los usuarios de RIM califican el correo-e como característica más importante, los usuarios de Palm eligen la agenda y los usuarios de teléfonos Google se inclinan por los mapas. El perfil de los usuarios de Windows Mobile es parecido al de los de RIM, pero con menos entusiasmo por el correo-e.

Prioridades de los usuarios del iPhone en cuanto a las funciones de su teléfono móvil comparadas con las del conjunto de los usuarios de móvil. Porcentaje de los usuarios de EE.UU. que consideran cada función entre las cuatro principales.

En mi opinión, esto demuestra de nuevo algo que llevo tiempo afirmando: la mayoría de la gente se compra el móvil más como un electrodoméstico que como un ordenador. Primero deciden cuáles son las funciones que más les importan, y a continuación eligen el teléfono que hace mejor esas cosas, en lugar de buscar el mejor dispositivo de aplicación general.

No digo que la flexibilidad no importe en absoluto, pero sí que es secundaria. Por ejemplo, añadir aplicaciones de terceros es la prioridad número 4 para los usuarios del iPhone, prácticamente empatada con otras características. Será interesante ver cómo evolucionan las prioridades a medida que Apple sigue promocionando intensamente su tienda de aplicaciones.

Para ver la nota completa da click aquí: http://www.canalpda.com/2009/05/04/8757-tendencias%20uso%20smartphones%20twitter