meish dot org: life, unfolding

Retweeting (that is, repeating someone else’s tweet, with attribution) has emerged from daily twittering habits and has become part of Twitter’s cultural vocabulary.

The idea of rebroadcasting something interesting/funny you’ve spotted isn’t new, and the custom of acknowledging your sources isn’t particularly revolutionary either, but what is interesting is that not all retweets (RTs) are alike.

In fact, long-term observation of RTing on Twitter reveals that there are a number of different objectives which could inspire a retweet, though of course the actual motivating force can only ever be known by the author of the retweet themselves.

To that end, I’ve identified what I consider to be the seventeen things that people are actually saying when they retweet others on Twitter:

1. “I wish I’d said this.”

Other people say clever/insightful/funny stuff. User wishes they’d said it first.

2. “I was going to say something, but this person said it better/funnier/faster than I could.”

Other people are better/faster with words. This type tends to come up a lot in Twitter memes, where the repetition of someone else’s (funny/clever) response is a way of participating without actually needing to find something to say.

3. “Spread the word/pass it on”

Breaking news and/or requests for help. Often contain an explicit request for readers to retweet the message.

4. “Everyone should see this because it’s important (IMHO).”

News, revelations and links which inform or contribute to a user’s core values. User wants to get this important thing in front of as many people as possible, because not knowing or caring about it is unimaginable.

5. “I found this tweet funny/interesting/clever and want to spread it.”

Not necessarily related to any particular topic, but user liked what someone else said, and want to expose it to their followers in the hope of getting it retweeted further.

6. “This is interesting and I have something to add to it.”

User found something interesting and wants to add a comment to it – though warning: too much editing/addition to a RT can make it significantly different from the original.

7. “This person found this good link, so I’m hat-tipping them.”

Credit where it’s due.

8. “Everyone else is retweeting this, so I am too.”

User wants to be in on a trending rebroadcasting of something interesting or important.

9. “Just in case you didn’t see this, it bears repeating.”

Repeating something which someone else said, because user thinks it unlikely that it will have had sufficient audience from the original author. This also happens over time, i.e. retweeting something that was said earlier on (and someone people even retweet themselves, which shows an alarming level of self-disaggregation)

10. “I’m plugged into a particular network that I don’t think too many of my followers are, so here’s something you won’t have seen.”

Having access to a wide variety of obscure sources makes the user seem like they’re plugged in to all sorts of interesting networks. Repeating something from someone relatively obscure reveals this.

11. “I want to belong to a particular club: retweeting this is our badge.”

Used in conjunction with hashtags, this type is usually sandwiched by a conditional (“if you believe…”) and an imperative (“…retweet this!”). The Twitter equivalent of “Honk if you had sex last night”

12. “I spotted this.”

User retweets as a substitute for having to create anything new themselves. Retweeting is an acknowledgement that something has been consumed. A human RSS reader.

13. “This person said something nice about me/us/project/company, but it would be terribly gauche to say it myself, so I’ll just refer you to what someone else said as a way of introducing a modicum of modesty.”

This is just weird. And it’s still gauche.

14. “I love this user. They always tweet great stuff. You should follow them.”

Trying to increase social capital of another user via retweeting their stuff to a wider audience in the hope that this will gain them new followers.

15. “My followers expect me to bring them the latest stuff (news, gossip, games, insight, links and more), which I source from a variety of places.”

User retweets to provide new value to their social graph. In the old days, this is what blogs were used for. But Twitter is a much more immediate way of thrusting one’s latest discoveries in front of a waiting audience.

16. “My social graph includes lots of great people, like this, and repeating what they said makes part of their greatness rub off on me.”

Reflected glory via mild sycophancy.

17. “I hope the person I’m RTing this from notices and follows me back.”

Slight fawning may produce social benefit to user, but potentially little value to anyone else.

Can you think of any others?

I made this the other day:

In case you’ve stumbled across it somewhere and made your way over here, you should know that this image was originally posted to Twitter with the tag #fauxiology.

While the experience above is based on observation of people using Twitter (including myself) over time, it’s also supposed to be tongue in cheek. There’s no supporting data and this is not intended to conform to rigorous scientific principals of research. It is, however, a pretty accurate hunch and a familiar pattern to many.

I’ve also written some other stuff about Twitter which you might want to look at.

This collage of web 2.0 logos should be pretty familiar to many people by now. It’s been knocking about for a few years, ever since the whole Web 2.0 Koolaid (what’s the British equivalent? Ribena?) started flowing.

During that time, I’ve seen it printed out and stuck up on the walls of companies and individuals, appearing in about a million blogs, and it should almost go without saying that this image gets used endlessly in presentations at events about the social web, or web 2.0 technologies, or the changing face of business in the last few years, or design and UX in the new web.

In that context, it is usually accompanied by sentiments like “Web 2.0 isn’t going anywhere” or “the social web is real and growing” – using the sheer quantity of Web 2.0-type offerings starting up in 2005ish as an indication of how much they were shaking things up and changing the game. Dare I even say shifting the paradigm? ;)

Anyway, having been professionally involved in one of the companies featured on the original logo collage, an avid user of a handful of others and a casual user (OK, I registered a username) for a whole bunch more, I’m as aware that the web 2.0 landscape has changed as you are.

So having recently been confronted with this image in a presentation (used as being indicative of current reality), I thought it was time that it was updated.

I present these updates without reference to or predicting the demise of web 2.0 or social technologies or anything like that. Just to be a bit more accurate.

The image below reflects which of this original set of companies have vanished or ceased trading, via the highly scientific method of searching for their names and clicking about until I could find reliable information about them.

The most reliable method seemed to be to go to the original Techcrunch (or mashable) hyping of the new service in 2005ish, and then follow the link to the company. If the link is kaput, then so is the company.

More than you thought? Or less? Certainly some of the daft names (and business models, and ideas) have dried up, but others remain, and still more have sprung up in their place, no doubt.

It’s also worth noting that there are a handful of others listed as alive on this diagram (or rather, not crossed out) which are, to put it politely, dormant or dwindling if not actually dead.
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I wanted to draw attention to this marvellous article about Twitter by early-era blogger and all round music’n'media maven Tom Ewing.

He’s written the article in a series of tweet-sized chunks, and there’s a lot to ponder on, there. I won’t reproduce the whole thing – you should read it all, in context – but a few of the most brilliant bits (IMO) follow:

There’s a deluge of Twitter hype from media flapmouths. None of them agree on what it’s for, just that it’s wonderful.

Now Twitter’s going mainstream and dipping down the hype curve there’s an equal rush of pieces damning it.

Is it a marketing platform? A news service? A celebrity hangout? A lame Facebook knock-off? A time sink for fools? Yes, yes, yes.

The boring truth is that Twitter is a communications tool, much like blogs or websites. It’s neutral– it simply enables certain effects.

A dip into the “public tweetstream”– the firehosed thoughts of 10 million minds– is indeed a one-way ticket to Moronopolis.

If what you see is idiocy, it’s because you’ve elected to follow idiots. Simple as that.

Depending on how you come at it, Twitter initially seems an idiot’s charter or a deserted echo chamber. The fun is creating your own order.

The good side of Twitter’s license to self-promote: The 140 limit forces you to focus thoughts and directs traffic to where you expand them.

I don’t follow any musicians on Twitter: I prefer my access mediated, ideally by Smash Hits magazine asking what color their socks are.

If musicians are talking about their socks of their own accord it’s not as fun somehow.

But from a musician’s point of view I can see exactly why you’d do it. Aside from being an incorrigible exhibitionist.

Endless disappointment is the cross the early adopter has to bear. As any indie rock fan knows.

Part of the reason I’m addicted is that Twitter reminds me of the internet in the 90s, but in accelerated microcosm.

There’s the same fascination and distrust with mainstream media, the same snobbish defensiveness, the same mix of chaos and excitement.

There’s the same random thrill of stumbling across great content, the same giddy sense that everyone is making it up as they go along.

And just like the old web, in two or three years the way we use Twitter now will seem really gauche and annoying and badly planned.

I think he absolutely nails it. Well said, Tom.

Incidentally, Tom’s Blackbeardblog tumblog is also well worth following if you’re interested in the intersection of social media and market research – full of insight and interesting ideas and links.

(And if you haven’t found it yet, I’ve got a tumblog too – more(ish) which is full of odds and sods and links and pictures and music and stuff)

New product idea:

With using just 16 individual letter badges, you can make a dozen or more popular interweb acronyms, which you can wear on your lapel, or anywhere you choose, to give the world a general message about your current mood or state.

For example:

The badges:
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The trouble with wildfire is, well, it spreads. Quickly. And uncontrollably. With dangerous consequences.

On the day I arrived in Australia earlier this year, the country was reeling from the loss of whole communities in the state of Victoria which had been decimated by raging bushfires which, kindled by a gruelling midsummer heatwave (which hit 46°C), had swept through townships on the outskirts of Melbourne leaving nothing but the blackened ribs of buildings and cars smouldering in their path.

Scores of people died, along with several million native animals.

As someone from a (thankfully) bushfire-free country, it’s all-too-easy to read about situations like this and wonder why people don’t just run away – until you realise a crucial fact: wildfire runs quicker than you.

In forests and dense undergrowth, the frontline can advance at a rapid walking pace (10-20km/hr) but across open farmland and urged on by a following wind, in some cases it can advance at 80-100km/hour – that’s the length of a football field in a matter of seconds. Twisty turny country roads and raining embers slow down those trying to escape, if they managed to even reach their cars at all.

Hitting temperatures of up to 1000°C, the radiant heat from the racing wall of fire destroys everything before the flames even get close.

The best advice for those who choose to stay and defend their property, is to put out spot fires as long as possible, then find somewhere safe that won’t burn – usually inside a building, and wait until the front passes over – less than ten minutes, in many cases. But that will likely be the longest ten minutes of your life.

So even though they can be survivable, wildfires are dangerous and the fact that they spread so, quickly, virulently and unpredictably makes them worthy of suspicion and careful regard.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the internet.

This weekend, something happened to the Amazon sales rank infrastructure which meant that lots of (fiction & non fiction) books which it had classified as adult, erotic or about sexuality suddenly had their sales rankings zapped.

Cue mass public suspicious blamestorming, name-calling and moral outrage, fuelled in no small part by Twitter.

Some of the kvetching was justified: certain books were harder (but not impossible) to find – which must be frustrating if you’re an author trying to sell books in those categories – plus the changes seemed to be applied inconsistently across the service (viz. a Playboy centrefold photo book retaining its sales rank, while Stephen Fry’s tender and gently rollicking (but not steamy in the slightest) autobiography lost its statistic. Weird.)

Some was not particularly justified, and just plain knee-jerk overreaction: “This is outright censorship!” people frothed. “Amazon have a homophobic policy!” “Let’s googlebomb them,” cried others, “I can’t wait to see them squirm!” “Boycott them!” “Book nazis!” “Why is Amazon removing the sales rankings from gay. lesbian books?”

That’s a big leap – making an assumption that it was a deliberate and malicious attempt to suppress a particular kind of literary work, or to discriminate against particular authors. And we all know what happens when you assume things.

It’s worth remembering Hanlon’s razor here:

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

(as mentioned by at least one Twitter user)

Now, it’s still not completely clear what happened, or why – and doubtless there’ll be repercussive rumbling and grumbling about this online for some time to come, until the full story is revealed – if it ever is.

(Though whether it should be Amazon’s responsibility to submit to public interrogation of their software release practices and allow a public hue and cry to take place is another question entirely – but let’s gloss over that for now.)

But for now, it seems to be a cock-up (no pun intended) which has been/is being rectified.

Anyone who’s ever worked in big complex technology organisations knows that stuff like this happens, and that 99.9% of the time, it’s because someone didn’t test something, or didn’t think that X schema would affect Y, or one bit of the business (the bit that handles the doohickeys) failed to consult another bit (the bit that slams the whammer) which meant some small, key issue was overlooked.

That doesn’t mean it’s a good thing, obviously, but it does mean that – as Occam and common sense instruct – the simplest explanation for some phenomenon is more likely to be accurate than more complicated explanations.

Sometimes, stuff fucks up.
Usually, no-one outside of technology knows about it.
Mostly, it gets fixed.

But as explanations go, it’s not as sexy or controversial or worth spreading as an explanation which includes the board of Amazon in a photo line-up for next year’s annual report, all wearing neon comic sans “We hate teh gayz” badges, though, is it?
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Here’s an idea.

You obviously know which country I’m in, because you’re able to determine whether or not a video is available to be viewed where I am.

I don’t necessarily like that, but I do get why you’ve had to do that. So, fine.

But since you know where I am, and what is and isn’t available for a location, how about you just don’t show me search results which aren’t available where I’m browsing from, instead of making me click through to every one in turn in order to discover via your helpful little message whether it’s available?

Because it’s bloody irritating the way you’ve done it.

And I can’t help feeling that passing on your legal pain to people trying to use your site, in the form of an annoying user experience, isn’t a particularly well-thought-out or elegant or long-term successful strategy.

It’s lazy, and it’s going to piss people off.

A few days ago, I read one of those articles that social media consultants seem to constantly be producing, about how to make a Facebook fan page successful.

They mentioned widgets and SEO and viral activity and all sorts of other tips and techniques, but failed to mention one very basic thing. The omission was glaring – to me, at least – and rather sad.

At the time, I made a note of it on my tumblr scrapbook, saying:

I read 5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page but I’m still wondering where “making a product that people want to become a fan of” comes into it.

But it’s been festering in my head ever since. Surely the best way to make sure your fan page is successful is to make something which inspires fandom. Then it just happens.

‘Twas ever thus!

Then this evening, I read Matt Haughey’s experience of buying a playground swing/slide set for his garden. He compared the experience to that of social media marketing, and said:

maybe instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends, you may not even need “social media marketing” after all.

Too right.

Social media is sometimes waved around like a magic stick, or an enchanted bean, which only some people – hallowed (mostly) self-identified consultants – can manipulate or unlock the secrets of.

But it’s not. Among other definitions, and at its most basic, social media is tools, situations and applications which enable people to talk to & with other people, about stuff they’re passionate or curious about.

Consultants can tell you interesting things about social media, and how it’s being used, and how it might develop or change over time, and how people might use it, but anyone – including me – who tells you that you absolutely MUST do X or Y to definitely make your magic social media beans flourish and grow, is making it up.

Sorry.

Andy Budd touched on this earlier this year when he pondered whether social media consulants were harming social media in the long run:

I don’t mean to sound cynical, but I do wonder what value a lot of social media consultants bring to their clients, and how long that value will last.

[...]

The problem I have with social media consultants … is less about the value they bring to their clients and more to do with the affect it’s having on the web.

Most social media consultants are actually people who are experienced enthusiasts with opinions about about tools and technologies – that’s fine, and they can play a really valuable evangelism role for organisations which need convincing about why social media matters, or how to get started.

Some (fewer, though) may even have valuable experience (professionally or as a passionate amateur) of actually building communities or creating products and tools which help people to share, curate and curate content (rather than just using them and talking about them). Again, they can tell you some really interesting stuff about user experience and interface design and the ethnology of participation.

And all of this can help your audience start talking to you, and to each other. No doubt about that.

But this knowledge and experience is only useful if you:

a) apply it in relevant ways for you and your audience/community, rather than following someone else’s recipe to the letter and
b) concentrate effort on making or having something which people want to talk about in the first place.

No amount of magic fairy dust can make an average, lacklustre proposition or product into a social object. Social media isn’t an exact science, full of calculated recipes and formulae. It’s about people.
And passion.
And communication.
And real stuff or experiences.

Last year at HICKtech in Owen Sound, Ontario, I gave a presentation about social media and community development which had as a central motif a big picture of shambolic detective Columbo, as a reminder that people participating in social experiences online (which only people like me ever call “participating in social experiences online”, while the people themselves call it “twittering” or “joining a Flickr group” or “writing on someone’s facebook wall”) need three things that homicide detectives always come back to in such hackneyed shows.

They need:

• Means
• Motive

and

• Opportunity

The echo-chamber of social media marketeers spends a lot of time thinking about the Means (ability, access, tools) and Opportunity (social graph, stimulus, habits, behaviours) for people to get involved in or pay attention to social activity online, but not nearly enough time thinking about Motive.

Why do people get excited and talk about stuff?
Because they care about it.
Because it’s good.
Because it’s worth talking about.

I wish product makers and media owners would spend a little less time thinking about manipulating audiences, and a little more time thinking about making good things to begin with.

To rather savagely paraphrase Matt Jones’ recent call to arms (now available in T-shirt or limited edition print form):

People get excited when you make good things.

So make your thing – whatever it is – good.

I don’t often write about work here, but the news this morning is too exciting not to share.

1. The Guardian is moving to publish exclusively online after 188 years in print. This partnership between Twitter and the Guardian is called Gutter.

2. We’ve extended the Gutter partnership to work with WordPress, to build a bold new commenting platform which limits all responses to 140 characters or less. This is known as GutterPress.

I like the logos.

Sigh.

Yes, it’s that Twitter post. Again.

This time, Steve Hodson describes my original post as a

list of things that in her eyes are just bad Twitter etiquette; or as Alan Patrick at Broadstuff called it “Twitterquette for Dummies”. For Meg any of the following is justifiable reasons for not following people

No! That’s not it! At all! Unless you add the words “for me” at the end. Those are my reasons for stopping following people (rather than not following them at all – a subtle difference, but I do at least give people a chance before I judge them!) – other people have other formulae in their heads. They only follow people interested in Social Media, or choose not to follow people whose names begin with H, or who have less than 200 followers, or who swear, or whatever. Each to their own!

And then Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins blusters that I “have no business telling me the right way to use it.” and goes on to say:

Giving me a list of pet peeves that’ll get me unfollowed or not followed in the first place is the height of arrogance. If you’re giving me information that statistically leads to people unfollowing others, that’s useful. When you offer up a list as gospel, as if you’re Al Gore or something, well that’s just irritating.

It’s a good way for me to never want to follow you on Twitter (“Wow, did he just go there? I think he did.”).

OK, so don’t follow me. Your choice. But note that there’s a difference, I think, in choosing not to follow someone because of what they do when actually using the service (what I said, above and in the original post) and choosing not to follow someone because you don’t like what they might say (what Mark’s saying, above).

Yesterday I was being made Queen of the Interwebs, and today I’m a failed Presidential candidate, with a religious prescriptive book. Tomorrow, can I be a superhero?

He continues:

Which leads me to the one and only rule I use as to whether I’m going to follow someone (or not) on Twitter:

“Am I interested in what they’re saying? If I am, they get followed. When they cease to be interesting, I don’t want to follow them any longer.”

Can someone please explain to me how this is different from my original point, except that it’s about content rather than behaviour? If you substitute a couple of words it looks like it’s coming from the same place, to me:

“Am I interested in what they’re saying? If I am, they get followed. When their habits start to be annoying, I don’t want to follow them any longer.”

My choice. But I least I might give them a chance, first.

For the sake of completeness, after yesterday’s similar clarification, here’s my response to Mark, which I left on his site:

Hi Mark,
Thanks for your thoughtful response to my original post. If you noticed, it wasn’t a list of things people shouldn’t do on Twitter, but rather, a list of things which bother *me*. The only person’s approach to Twitter I can – and want to – influence significantly is *my own*.

Just as your personal rule indicates – “when they cease to be interesting, I don’t want to follow them any longer” – my personal preferences, in the list you linked to and ranted about, state that I will make choices about who I follow. But if people want to liveblog every event using twinnovative twerminology and retweet every other update from their circle, then they should absolutely feel free. I just probably won’t be listening anymore. But that’s my choice.

In writing my post a week ago, I was highlighting a number of behaviours which I prefer not to follow – things that turn me off, so to speak – but I firmly believe (and have said repeatedly, including in the opening paragraph of the post you refer to!) that people should use it however they feel most appropriate for themselves, their circle of friends, their requirements and their tolerances.

Quite a different message, in fact, from that which you paint me as saying, above.

I’m not being Al Gore, and my list is not gospel to anyone apart from me. When someone asks you to name your least-favourite flavour of icecream, if you answer “strawberry”, does that mean we all have to stop eating it? No. It simply means you choose not to partake in that flavour, and that people who invite you to dinner might like to be aware of that little preference – or not, but at least then they won’t be surprised when you decline dessert.

I object to the gross misrepresentation that I’m trying to tell you – or anyone – what to do (as if I had any influence whatsoever!) and am dismayed that you found my list of pet peeves – a lighthearted list on my personal blog to be “the height of arrogance”. Some would say that having a blog *at all* is pretty arrogant – but I disagree. I think that having a personal space on the internet onto which one can post one’s personal thoughts, ideas, theories and opinions is one of the great joys of social media (or “personal publishing”, which is what we called it when I started blogging in January 2000). The tone of the entire nine years my blog has been going are reflective of my life, unfolding. My thoughts. My opinions. My take on things.

When I am made queen of the internet, *then* you can start a revolution to overthrow me. Until then, to paraphrase something Ani DiFranco once said “should any part of my blog offend you, do not close your ears to it; just take what you can use, and move on.”

In case you’re interested, I published a follow-up clarification on my blog yesterday, in response to another person who misunderstood/misrepresented my views on their own blog. You can find it here:

http://meish.org/2009/03/28/clarification-of-the-post-about-things-that-will-get-you-bumped-from-my-twitter-list/

Also, FWIW, I’ve been on Twitter since November 2006.

Apologies to anyone who comes here for the usual wibbling. Whatever passes for normal service will resume when people stop twisting my words and painting me as a sort of Emily Post/Hitler mashup for Twitter.