Many more good comments on Twitter Fire your Followers, Hire Your Friends so I thought I would do a “round-up” with some interesting comments from Jen Goode, Ike Pigott, Dana Marley and Joe Magennis.

Jen Goode comments:

“I was just talking about this very thing last night with my Husband. Let me preface my view by pointing out, I don’t use twitter as a marketing tool I use is as a way to share thoughts, ideas, comment among multiple listeners - and hopefully learn something while I’m listening. We were both trying to figure out “how do you keep up with it all”. Twitter alone, with the 20 updates at a time view, is difficult enough. Then add in any other single source of connecting and a mess of chatter is soon to follow. I tend to follow whomever follows me - to me it feels like a courtesy. If they took the time to follow me, the least I can do it nod back. But really I can’t hear everyone and the more I follow the more I miss - so who is really listening to me? Very counter productive. My solution as of 9pm last night was to add a new twitter account just so I can keep track of those people I know personally. Who knows how I’ll keep up with a second account.”

Well put. “I don’t use twitter as a marketing tool I use is as a way to share thoughts, ideas, comment among multiple listeners - and hopefully learn something while I’m listening.”

Ideas, thoughts, and comments- while listening and learning.

Ike Pigott, writes:

I just did a presentation for top-level marketing and PR types who want to know what to do with this stuff, but are afraid.

I told them the number 1 benefit is the ability to network with like-minded people, and benefit from human-powered search.

I don’t have to tell them that you can get as much out of following 300 as you can out of 3,000 — because the attention span limits will take care of that. Why introduce them to the concept of considering that metric when Quality trumps Quantity?

Ike, I think top-level marketing and PR types can sense the shift, but in most hierarchies the shift means uncertainty and uncertainty leads to pain. Perhaps the pain of losing one’s job? In our current economy it is a given that brands will or are already feeling the pain. Pain means they have no choice but to innovate and embrace what is coming down the pipe…and something wicked this way comes. Perhaps a new metric? Cost-Per-Influence? They aren’t ready for it yet- still too hard to measure but it will get there.

Dana Marley asks:

“Exactly what do you mean by “Of course that is false- and we know 99% of businesses out there do not understand viral marketing.

Viral marketing is common. Look forward to your answer and love your insightful posts. Thanks to everyone for their two cents.”

Dana- let me recommend two books my mentor recommended to me a decade ago: “The Selfish Gene” by Dawkins and “Media Virus” by Rushkoff. This should give you a meta-blueprint for the construction of a media virus or “viral marketing”. Good case study would be The Blair Witch movie by Haxan Films or see the story-telling aspects in this post on Eldtrich Errors or you might study some of the techniques Paperghost and I used in the security field. (Paperghost is a natural entertainer where every case we investigate was a play and every character viral and hysterical too boot.)

Joe Magennis Says:

Wayne, I think our mutual friend Sam once said “follow ideas, not people” .. which clearly states how I view the act of participating on Twitter. The term I’ve used over and over is “discovery”. I am in awe of our ability to discover, listen in on, and participate in conversations about any interesting topic you can imagine, via a simple messaging platform. These are still early days in an amazing era for communication and real time discovery. Some will miss the point and pollute their streams, while others will maintain some balance that leads to rewards.

Sam does get around doesn’t he? That is a nice maxim and I agree with it. However, most people follow people. They never recognize ideas, or if they do follow ideas I am not sure they act on them.

While I am in awe of many people’s ability to discover these fantastic things I still find it disappointing the masses fail to “discover” so much more. I know that sounds elitist and it isn’t meant that way- well perhaps it is- forgive me. To discover for many simply means finding someone they knew long ago on Facebook and playing Trucker Wars for tokens. I have to admit that is kind of cool, but I wonder if there was a reason I moved on from these relationships?

Many non-technical types I know believe Facebook IS the Internet. Of course many believe the World Web Wide is the Internet too.

The thrill of discovery or even being able to discover is awesome. The thrill of crafting new ideas and putting them into motion is my favorite activity. I am amazed at how connections are made from such diverse people, how we come together and exchange ideas or thoughts or even a comment- even with people we don’t know. If social media is used properly- we probably will get to know them soon enough.

This technological and yet fragile ecosystem validates the best of the human experience. Sometimes it feels like the 70’s- 80’s when I listened to my dad key Morse code every single night so he could communicate and connect with diverse people around the globe. Sometimes it feels like the rush of freedom I experienced when I got my VAX account back 1988. The internet was still “small” and primarily composed of college students, academia, and the hacker scene. The network of machines and friends itself was “discovery”.

- Can one do business on Twitter or social networks?
Sure. I am sure that can be done with good stewardship.

- Can one “market” on social networks?
I believe so, but it won’t be direct marketing (in the vast majority of cases.)

I’d rather see story-telling.

A marketing invasion could go very bad if not thought out well. My first bit of advice to businesses is that they immerse themselves in the medium first. Then hire someone who knows their business- I say that, (yes I am available) because the vast majority of in-house attempts I have seen have been horrible. There are many good people who have the creativity, technical savvy, and they are steeped in how social media works both strategically and tactically.

I still think we are headed for pollution and the fish will leave the waters or we’ll have to close the networks…Case in point I read a Tweet from WarWraith ( Warwick Rendell)who suspected he was getting many followers because he mentioned “networking marketing” in a previous tweet. Naturally I had to try it. I made a few comments, and even some derogatory ones. The follows stacked up and the direct pitches came in…I call it the network marketing flu…sounds like the six pillars in action? (I have created my own master system to help you gain evil mastery over social media and make a quick buck.)

Summary:

I will quote myself- not trying to be smug - but It was something I wrote in February of 2005 and it is still poignant in 2009.

“I will put it at as bluntly as I can: As long as Internet marketers continue to let others crap in their drinking water, they should not be surprised when they come down with dysentery.”

ADDENDUM: Edited for WordPress mangling some words.

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April 1st is probably one of the best days to spend online. I love the new product launches, the press releases and the spirit of prank.

I have “soft-launched” my own product…The Six Pillar System. This product is one part distilled social media strategy, one part religious cult, and one part technological babble.

It features a number of fantastic and Probably Not Ethical(R) social media tools: The Scrobble Cannon, Wolf Blitzen, Discover Your Inner Bot, ReTweet is Neat, and many more.

Guaranteed to be Mostly Awesome and Probably Not Ethical(R)…check out this sample testimonial:

“I am still an Acolyte and slowly working the Six Pillar Program. I loved the Wolf Blitzen tool right away. Probably from my exposure to the small round pebbles and matrix-based vector modeling waves. Not only was I able to make great money from the comfort of my home I am also doing a great community service by connecting lawyers with the Mesothelomia patients who need them. This program has been one of the most positive things in my life. Thank You!”

—Scooter F. Appelwood, CT

The Six Pillar System Join and see how far you advance!

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Jeff Molander blogged on my Twitter post and I feel obligated to make a response and correct a few inaccuracies- Industry pundits know it as “Molanderism”. Given my tendency to blog quite a bit on Twitter I can’t pass it up.

Quotes extracted from: Twitter With What Purpose.

On Twitter Value

“As Wayne Porter points out, Twitter is failing to provide value… and there’s a reason why”

Let me be clear. I never said it was failing to provide value, and I find “value” arbitrary. Its value is based on entirely on the goal of the user. It has tangible business value for me. I have made many great contacts, both professional and personal, via Twitter. I measure success by influencers I connect with. Twitter is a low-overhead service to keep in touch and get to know people from a personal and professional perspective. It has been my experience that personal experience often seals deals, or at advantageously and more expedient.

I remember Sam Harrelson , who introduced me to Twitter first, and I researching into the concept of “Twitter Proprioception”. Twitter Proprioception could be described as the sense of the relative position of one’s Twitter Network. This is another interesting aspect of Twitter, if you have a manageable set of followers to experience this “sense”.

Doing The Math- Social Network Theory

“In other words, do the math. He goes further and echos Porter…”

Just the inverse. I was echoing Jan Hertsens here. I agree with much of Jan’s take but not all. I don’t really agree with his fraud statement. One can follow more than a few dozen, especially if we look at the frequency of tweets per individual. The limit is rather elastic.

Let me, as merely a reference, bring up Dunbar’s Number (Dunbar predicted a human “mean group size” of 148 (rounded to 150) a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. Dunbar claimed “this a direct function of relative neocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size … the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained.”.

We might also look into Bernard-Killworth. These two researchers postulated a mean number of ties at 290. This is roughly double Dunbar’s estimate. (Bernard-Killworth median: 231 lower due to upward straggle in the distribution still higher that Dunbar.). Lastly, Christopher Allen has some interesting studies looking at Ultima Online communities and he actually moves the number of ties down. I don’t have a hard and fast number…and Dunbar’s Number is only an interesting reference here. I am more in the camp of Bernard-Killworth with social networks and with Allen on tighter knit groups that require cooperation. e.g. MMORPGs

Followers and Fraud

“Fire your followers, hire your friends, If you follow more than a few dozen people at the same time, you are a fraud.”

Actually Molander has created some strange concatenation of Jan’s quote and my own to bolster his point. I agree one should keep followers down to a manageable level, unless they plan on throwing static into a busy and overcrowded channel. Larger brands might be able to use the medium for wide range broadcasts, but I don’t think it fits most individuals. If people are not reading the message…there is no point. If they are not responding, there is no point.

Twitter and Complexity

“Twitter should make life easier not more complex”.

If Twitter is making one’s life more complex, I would advise them to revise their strategies or engagement processes. 140 Characters is not that complex.

“When we question Twitter we should focus on the real issues — does it improve our lives and businesses or just complicate it?”

It is a matter of perspective. It improves my life. It is not the only social network I use either. I tend to utilize different networks for different social groups and goals. Sometimes I use them in a “fused” fashion. FriendFeed is a good example of an aggregator that allows me to do tasks and message in multiple networks.

I suppose Jeff wants to measure ROI on Twitter- (Reference Steve Rosenbaum’s Top 10 Brands Who Twitter (and why!) ? Not sure. In one paragraph he tears it down as a failure, and at the end of the entry he seems to give it an o-k. I think Steve makes a compelling case for Whole Food’s use of Twitter on a large scale rather than on a more personal business relationship scale. See Twitter and Social Media Chain Reactions (March 18, 2007). This post chronicles a sample from the start of my Twitter account and some of the various social interactions and collisions that occur along the way.

We Know What You Said, But What Have You Heard?

I will leave you with the words of Brian Clark in a comment from the original post.

Been thinking about this alot recently after SXSW, where everyone was Twittering and talking about social media … but not ever mentioning listening as one of its strengths. Here’s my theory: you can use any medium to just reproduce the functionality of some prior system, but that doesn’t mean you’re using that new medium in the way that makes it different or unique.

Some people are using Twitter like an email publisher or an RSS publisher would: they talk into the channel, and love to contemplate how big their channel is, and go all obssessive over services that show them how they rank compared to other channel publishers. They increasingly talk about “Twitter marketing” and “making money from Twitter.” Yes, Twitter can be used that way … but so can email and RSS and a host of other platforms. None of that is what makes Twitter unique. In fact, as an RSS reader or an email client replacement, Twitter is a crippled replacement.

To the point of the original blog. Jim Kukral’s heavy number of followers and follows seem counter-intuitive and counter-productive. In my opinion he should change his strategy. It would be neat to hear from Jim on how he measures ROI and what advantages a large number of Followers/Follows have- if any. I believe that is the rhetorical question he seems to be asking.

Key Point: “…but not ever mentioning listening as one of its strengths. Here’s my theory: you can use any medium to just reproduce the functionality of some prior system, but that doesn’t mean you’re using that new medium in the way that makes it different or unique.”

Feel free to blog away and trackback or let me know via Twitter.

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Upon return from my Thoreau experiment I noticed Twitter has become one of the major platforms of choice for micro-chunked communication. All hail the social media king. Twitter finally has mass traction. For better or worse that is how it rolls on the Net- you can actualy fall victim to your own success. Because Twitter has garnered this popularity (mass) the snake oil salesman, the weasly marketers, malware pushers, phishers, phonies, among other characters, have invaded the sacred land of Twitter.

Some Words on the Phishers, Pushers and Phonies

The security attacks do not surprise me. Twitter’s setup makes it all too easy to pull a fast one and it has always been a social engineer’s green pasture. I may get some vindication, perhaps I might even get a door prize, by being the first (along with Paperghost) to coin the term “Twishing”.

2) Long web addresses, URLS, are wrapped in redirect or compression services like tinyURL- this by itself is not bad and a perfectly legitimate use- remember “Tweets”, as the Twitter messages are known, are capped at 140 characters so a compression service makes sense. However, since it is a blind redirect- you don’t know where you might end up. An attacker could encode a malicious site on the next hop, inject obfuscated Javascript into the header (as we saw with the World Cup case), or someone might link to a site without knowing it has been compromised or the site might later become compromised. It is not too hard to predict that we might see “Twishing”, or phishing via Twitter.

Of course at the time only the Japanese press had any idea what we were taking about. I suppose that is because it was early 2007 and the Japanese are far more adept with mobile technologies or perhaps because the U.S. media couldn’t even grasp Twitter at the time. At any rate I think it is high time a major worm rips through Twitter. Let’s hope not.

How Many is Too Many?

Security aside let’s talk about followers, following, updates, and other “Twitter Metrics”.

I saw this Tweet exchange from evil genius Brian Clark to social media pundit Jim Kukral. Since I know them both well, I have no problem stepping in and egging this on.

Jim Tweeted about his followers and he asks on his blog if the high number of followers and follows can be chalked up to narcissism.

So why do I have 10k followers? Once again, I’m at a Twitter crossroads. Maybe you can help. Now what? Go for 20k followers? 50k?

Brian Tweeted back:

@jimkukral How well do you know each of you 10K followers, Jim? I bet not well at all. Sad, that: big ego will cause neck pain.

I agree. Instead of going for 20k or 50k, trim the group down to about 1k or so. There is only so much bandwidth that humans can manage…granted there are technical workarounds, and I will get to that in my next Twitter post, but I feel it is the value of the connections and not how many pipes you have.

Some Good Advice

My friend, Jan, writes this post- You are all special! That’s why you ride the short bus to school! post

To quote from his post:

Are you starting to asses your self-worth by the number of followers you have?

Do you “follow” people just so they might follow you?

Do you “follow” people just because they follow you?

That’s retarded.

And if you have a script in place that does the automatic “follow who follows me” for you…
that makes you the retard that pees in the public pool.

Here’s why:

The number of followers is not a score. It’s a statistic. Like “minutes used on your phone plan” or “number of claimed dependents”. Changing that number doesn’t make you more or less cool. Changing your behavior just to change the number is stupid.

The entire “Reason D’être” is to post status messages. So that people who think you are interesting can see what you are doing or thinking. So they “follow” you. But: there is a limited amount of information that a human can possibly read and comprehend, at any given 24h period.

I think this sentence sums it up well.

“Changing that number doesn’t make you more or less cool. Changing your behavior just to change the number is stupid.”

You might want to adopt this motto: Fire Your Followers, Hire Your Friends.
You’ll get more return from the latter.

Further Reading on Auto-Follow and the Quality vs. Quantity debate:

Sam Harrelson: on Twitter Sanity

Scott Jangro: on Take Twitter Back

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Oh noes.

This has to be one of the most brazen, although not very clever, examples of fraud I have seen- and I have seen quite a bit. From one ad call it loads over 500+ ad impressions. To add insult to injury it moves into forced CPC clicks from search engines. The computer making the recording eventually crashed from the pop-ups.

Advertising Fail.

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A Marketing Experiment on Twitter.

About a two years ago I setup a Twitter account with keywords reflecting a particular facet of the telecommunications industry.  I bought a cheap domain with a keyword relevant domain and setup a Tumblr account on this domain to aggregate information on the industry via RSS (that actually took some honest work). I used this domain name in the profile, so it does look like an active site, which I suppose it is. I never linked from the site to the Twitter account, I wanted to ensure any signups came from the Twitter account pool. I proceeded to follow two random Twitter accounts. I made 28 posts, links to industry news, in the course of two months and stopped. I waited.

I was curious to see how or if keyword relevance would play a role in the number of Twitter followers. Nothing happened- at first.

After reviewing the last three months activity the account has garnered almost 150 followers- over 50 followers per month. I checked through many of the followers and I don’t think they are bots.

Account Metrics:

Followers: 146
Following: 2
Updates: 28

My guess is that Twitter has market mass and that people are conducting keyword searches and subscribing to anything industry related. I noted that “[keyword] Twitter” was the #2 result in Google SERPS. The keyword is very competitive. Perhaps signups are coming from organic search which is plausible given Twitter’s growth.

I will eventually reveal the account, but for now I am curious to see how far this goes and if I can nudge things to accelerate growth. There is nothing of real value in this account, no pithy words of wisdom, not even an update in months, yet people want to follow it?

Are the new Twitter masses brain dead or am I missing something? I fail to see any value in haphazardly signing up to keyword relevant accounts and hitting follow- especially when this account hasn’t updated in months perhaps a year.

At any rate my “real” Twitter account.

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The End of Wayne Unplugged

All experiments must come to an end or so they say. I have spent the last six months on an interesting pilgrimmage. During four of those six months I completely “unplugged” from the grid. No e-mail, No Web, No Net, No cell phone- Nothing…I explored nature, toured back alley graffiti covered alleys controlled by gangs, explored hollows, talked to a wide-range of people and had a host of other adventures. Most of the time I simply thought about things. Exactly where am I going and why?

During the last two months I slowly integrated various social networks into the mix as a spectator only in order to get a feel for what the non-technical or “average” user of social networks and technology experience. I felt I needed to obtain an objective view and I couldn’t do that while inside the fast-paced world of the Net. Not to mention I needed to get into good health once and for all- mission accomplished. I feel great.

Various Insights and Opinions: Emphasis on American Culture since that was my POV.

• Technology is outpacing what society and individuals can responsibly cope with. This will lead to health problems, continued high stress, and a feeling of “never catching up”. With all of this technological power I feel many societies are wired completely wrong.
• Dirt-world communities are rapidly disintegrating and being replaced by a homogenous cyber-culture whose population is devoid of a history of the cyber-culture itself. The new generations will not know their neighbors. This is a novel thing in many ways as people can connect to like-minded people, but if a collapse should occur it pays to know your neighbor. Humans perform better in groups.
• Communities and cultures are being “bleached” away as we slowly move toward a homogenous culture and shared global heritage. This will take time of course, a few generations, but with cell signals invading forest glades it is obvious.
• The trend rejecting abject consumerism is a good thing, but it might be too late as the spectre of economic and social ruin looms on the horizon. Eitherway the transition will be painful and “ruin” is subjective. Standards of living , propped up  by consumerism, will drop. However, quality of life could improve. For example, we could implent initiatives like four-day work weeks and human’s most precious resource- time.
• Most people no longer understand anything about the technology they use everyday and because of this ignorance many people use it without good stewardship. We drive cars we cannot fix, eat food we cannot make or produce, and many operate in an environment they do not understand with a false sense of security. We run and gun this technology with fuel that has probably reached its peak point.

I think we have finally sold our soul for digital trinkets, our privacy for another 10% discount, our lives for cashback, our planet for convenience and our autonomy to mega-corporations knowing full well they will destroy the very core of the communities in which we live. Not that it matters, we don’t know our neighbors anyway and we are prepared to mortgage future generations lives and their planet for plastic.

Some of us exist in fiber, in the cloud, in a haze of blinking circuits. Our identity is defined by fragments of conversation, video clips, digital signals, glowing pixels and our connections to others.

Technology should serve people,  not people serving technology.

Where to Go From Here…

Naturally I have to get down to business, no sabbatical can go on forever- however I have radically changed my priorties and value set. For example, my family now sits down for meals. I know some people do this, but I had lost sight of such a simple pleasure propelled by the fast pace of technology. I didn’t have to eat on the run- I felt I had too.

I am still debating if I will continue blogging here. I believe many blogs will morph into a nexus for the various streams of micro-chunked information and fragments of social interaction- forming a sort of “canon”. Despite this I believe there is value in controlling said nexus as you have limited or no control if you are living completely in the cloud. I am considering radio casts or casts. I don’t think I will do video- I lack the talent. I know I sound negative, but I am bullish on humans.

There are good things on the horizon too-

We just need to figure out what we really want. Not what we are told to want.

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For the Security & Privacy Guys

Because I don’t want to bore my security minded readers with my impending personal insights I will give folks with a musical look at PGP and the lyrics to a techno song written by PsykoSonic on Zimmermann’s program. I think my security readers will like it as well as folks who were on the nascent Net.

Background on PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) Story:

Philip R. Zimmermann is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy, an email encryption software package. Originally designed as a human rights tool, PGP was published for free on the Internet in 1991. This made Zimmermann the target of a three-year criminal investigation, because the government held that US export restrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP spread worldwide.

Lyrics to PGP:

Streaming Listen: http://www.rhapsody.com/psykosonik

The G-men all are cryin’
And tearin’ out their hair,
‘Cause there’s a new cryptography
That’s shown up everywhere.
Nobody can break it,
However good they be.
Everybody’s PC got the PGP.
.
It guarantees who’s callin’
And just who gets the call.
If you ain’t got your code-phrase,
You can’t get in at all.
Oh, there ain’t nothin’ like it
To keep your privacy.
Half the world’s computers got the PGP.
.
There’s no way to crack it,
Not if you take a year.
All the spooks & wiretappers
Are cryin’ in their beer.
They can’t spy on E-mail
Here or oversea
When every home computer’s got the PGP.
.
Bless the man who made it,
And pray that he ain’t dead.
He could’ve made a million
If he’d sold it to the Feds,
But he was hot for freedom;
He gave it out for free.
Now every common citizen’s got PGP.
.
So go say what you want to,
Of love or war or hate,
Kinky sex, or dirty words,
Or overthrow the state.
Nobody can stop you.
Speech is really free
When everybody’s PC got the PGP.

Download PGP If you wish: http://www.pgp.com/downloads/desktoptrial/index.html

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