I’ve limited the number of people I follow on Twitter. I just passed 150 and it seems like too many. I’m sure it’s time to look at desktop apps or other websites to help me manage my Twitter reading but I usually read on my G1 with Twitdroid (agreed to be the best Android Twitter app… of course, no official app from Twitter) and that is usually in down time so it’s OK. [Please suggest tools for me to try below. I'll review them as I use them.]
I find people to follow in the usual ways, most often through friends or people whose opinion I respect (yes, some fall into both categories) retweeting or recommending a follow. I often follow, see if I like I what I read for a few days, and then keep it or unfollow.
You see, there’s this Guy…
I respect Guy Kawasaki. He is an UCLA Anderson alum like me. I saw him give the keynote at CJU 2008. His career speaks for itself. So don’t read the following in any way as an attack on Guy. I figure out how things work by playing with them and asking questions. I find that in many cases, the questions are more important than the answers. In this case, I am trying to understand self-retweets and find a solution.
I started following Guy the week before last. I can’t decide if I want to continue following him. He has interesting tweets but he uses Twitter differently than anyone else I follow.
Guy tweets the same tweets numerous times for days. I don’t have exact figures of how many times or over what period of time.
I hate it. I hate it because I get the same tweet over and over and there is no indication that it’s a repeat tweet. I don’t want to read the same thing 5 times when I’ve already seen it before 4 of those times… and that can happen 10 or more times a day!
Ask the Twittersphere
It seemed like the best way to get an understanding of this practice was to ask my Twitter followers, many of whom know better than I about these things. So I asked:
TheDavidLewis: Why does @GuyKawasaki tweet the same thing multiple times?
First came the humorous comment from a friend:
Is he stuttering?
Then came a tweet that expressed what I was thinking:
why are you still following him – too many tweets – borders on white noise
Then came the reply tweets from Guy and a brief back-and-forth:
GuysReplies: @TheDavidLewis same reason CNN and ESPN run the same stories over and over
GuysReplies: @TheDavidLewis I schedule them 24 hrs in advance at one time
TheDavidLewis: @GuysReplies When you retweet yourself, why don’t you put RT in front of tweets for tweeps who read all day and want a fresh feed?
GuysReplies @TheDavidLewis and people would accuse me if trying to game rt sites
TheDavidLewis: @GuysReplies How about starting a new trend with putting RTme at the start so RT sites don’t get confused? Others will follow your lead.
TheDavidLewis: @GuysReplies Also that is only 4 characters so it would save on having to put your whole name/handle there
Tweet & Retweet were sitting in a boat, Tweet fell out. Who was left?
I know that Guy is not the only person self-retweeting. I hadn’t thought of it the way he was looking at it. Now that I’ve thought about it I still don’t agree. I think that using the TV metaphor is wrong. I follow @CNNbrk on Twitter and don’t recall ever seeing a duplicate tweet or self-retweet. I get that CNN repeats stories on TV but that is a different medium and CNN views it that way. I only saw 1 duplicate story when I scanned ESPN’s tweets.
I choose to watch CNN when I want to watch it. It’s there when I want it and when I watch, it is the only programming on my TV (I do not have PIP and don’t want it and I have no more than 1 TV in any room). If they repeat a story, I change. I watch little TV (I used to so don’t take that as a judgment, just a time constraint) so it’s not much of an issue.
Twitter is different. I get a feed in real-time. It is an aggregated feed of all of the people/entities I follow. I scan some and read some. I click through some links. I know that it is real-time… except for Guy.
Some people have commented that the value of Twitter is in the potential to mine real-time information. This practice skews that as well.
I am leaning toward unfollowing Guy. I do not think so much of myself to assume that it will matter to Guy if one guy unfollows him. I am sure that many tweeps have. The issue is what is more important: To keep the folks who read tweets throughout the day or retweet yourself so that potentially more of your (approximately 180,000 for Guy) followers read it? I could very well be an outlier and there is no reason for Guy to spend time trying to fix it. But what if there is an easy solution?
Tweets with no repeats
Guy listened and Guy replied. I found just found this in Guy’s feed.
@GuysReplies: How to get my tweets with no repeats: http://holykaw.alltop.com/rss.xml
While I appreciate the gesture, I don’t want an RSS feed. I am using Twitter. I let other people filter out the noise of RSS for me. I’m sure that I miss a lot of great articles but I have no choice based on my schedule. Guy is one of those people who reads a lot and recommends the best of what he finds. I see value in that. The question is whether there is enough value to read all of his retweets. [Yes, I know that Guy is using Twitter to build Alltop. I do not fault him in that as there is value in what he is doing. He adds to conversations.]
A scoop of chocolate. A scoop of vanilla. Don’t waste my time.
The solution seems to be a new tag. I propose RTme. It is only 4 characters (plus a space to make it 5) which is fewer than if I had to add RT @TheDavidLewis. It would be a quick way to tell what I’ve already read. Hell, I’d be happy with a simple * at the beginning of a repeated tweet.
For now, I’m going to try using RTme and retweeting a bit. I think it would be more effective for Guy to start the trend but I’ll give it a try. You know I’ll have to RTme this article.
