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Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

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Econsultancy unfollowing 19,000 people? Sorry, not good enough

In Announcements on January 15, 2010 at 12:35 am

I would not be so vain as to imagine that my contributions to the “gaming Twitter followers” debate, nor the post they prompted by Will Heaven at the Telegraph, had anything to do with Econsultancy’s announcement yesterday that it was unfollowing the impressive 19,000 people its @econsultancy account had followed.

But I am going to chip in. Because, Chris Lake, merely unfollowing the 19,000 people your script followed for you isn’t good enough. And nor are the seeming half-truths and curious definitions in your blog post. Read the rest of this entry »

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Telegraph.co.uk: “Sky TV’s Head of Social Media and the sexing up of Twitter accounts”

In Announcements on December 23, 2009 at 6:12 pm

I did say I was going to depersonalise this debate. And I meant it: look out for my post on the subject in January, which will be concerned with the issue of gaming followers and its effect on online reputation.

But in the meantime, it seems that Telegraph.co.uk has picked up the story. For those interested, here’s how they’re reporting it (click through to the original for pictures and links):
Read the rest of this entry »

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“You’ve called me an idiot, illiterate and a retard but I still respect you.”

In Cries for help on December 20, 2009 at 11:28 pm

That’s what someone wrote to me on Twitter yesterday. Ugh. Doesn’t it make you want to barf? What’s most annoying about people who use pathetic, weaselly phrases like this one (normally as a means of eliciting sympathy from their pocket band of social media fucktard sycophants) is that they normally take the “bad words” completely out of context.

Now, I’m not going to go into the conversational context any more than necessary, because that particular debate is over, and he and I have kissed and made up. But I am citing his tweet as an example of how not to conduct yourself in a public discussion. Read the rest of this entry »

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“Gaming influence”, or: How do you end up with 30,000 followers and 30,000 followees?

In Burning questions on December 20, 2009 at 9:11 pm

A source writes, telling me the answer to my question earlier tonight to @Mazi is less exciting than I imagined.

I’ve done a bit of digging, and it turns out that @Mazi, @Joe and @rhys_isterix are (or were) “community managers” for Sky (@Mazi) and MySpace (@Joe and @rhys_isterix) respectively. According my source, they each pimped their personal Twitter profiles to their respective (and very large) work communities. If you’ve ever had a MySpace profile, you’ll remember Tom, that “automatic friend” you had when you joined. Hardly surprising Tom had a lot of friends, was it? Read the rest of this entry »

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we are social… honest

In Burning questions on December 19, 2009 at 11:58 pm

“Social media experts” are always banging on about “authenticity” and “authentic conversations”. But how authentic are they really?

The mess around Eurostar this weekend reminded me of my favourite “conversation agency”, we are social (who list Eurostar as a client, and are apparently in charge of the brand’s social media strategy). Let’s leave aside the pisspoor job Eurostar and their representatives have done this weekend: Mike Butcher has taken them apart already.

But take a look at we are social’s primary Twitter feed:
Read the rest of this entry »

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A brief but terrifying glimpse into my subconscious

In Burning questions, Cries for help on September 3, 2009 at 7:56 pm

I often wake in the middle of the night, with what I imagine at the time to be a game-changingly insightful or brilliant train of thought suspended in mid-air in front of me. I’m immmediately gripped by panic, worried that I might lose it if I don’t get it down. So I flip open my MacBook and start typing furiously. When I’m done, I get back in to bed, and am usually asleep again within a few minutes.

I have about three hundred of these frantically-recorded night-time memos now. Here’s one of them. Read the rest of this entry »


Why I follow who I follow

In Policy statements on August 15, 2009 at 11:42 pm

I’ve decided to document a massively helpful change I recently made to the way I use Twitter. I don’t know how interesting or useful this will be to other people, but I hope it’s both.

In order to keep Twitter useful and manageable, and because there are quite a few people whose tweets I don’t want to miss, I recently halved the number of people I follow. My experience of Twitter changed dramatically, and for the better.*

But a couple of friends, including someone I’ve known for ten years, have written to me since, asking why I’m not following them any more. “Because you add no value to my stream,” I’ve replied.

Harsh, perhaps. But it’s true: just because you adore or admire someone doesn’t mean you should automatically follow them. Because Twitter’s not Facebook. Some of the people I follow online I’m not friends with in real life (and, in some cases, wouldn’t want to be). Some of the people I can’t get enough of in real life are mind-numbingly boring on Twitter. Read the rest of this entry »

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A retweet is just a retweet (unless I say otherwise)

In Announcements, Policy statements on August 12, 2009 at 11:30 pm

Now look here. We need to have a word about this retweet business. There are two things you should know:

  1. Retweeting should not be read as endorsement or agreement.
  2. Retweeting means you want others to see whatever it is you’re retweeting. That is all.

All I intend when I RT something is for my followers to see it too. That might be because it’s brilliant, but it’s just as likely that I’m taking the piss out of the original tweeter and want to expose them to wider ridicule, à la TweetingTooHard. Because that’s how I am. Read the rest of this entry »

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What’s in a name?

In Announcements on June 29, 2009 at 12:24 am

I’m really into branding. I spend a lot of time wandering around the net, enjoying some of the wacky-but-somehow-appropriate names and logos people come up with for their websites, companies and projects. Usually, I can come up with pretty good names for things myself.

But I’ve got this problem. I’m about to start my own tech industry events agency, concentrating on large-scale and high-end parties, networking events, suppers and conferences. Nothing too ambitious to begin with: this is a side-project for me. The thing is, I can’t, for the life of me, come up with an awesome enough name. Read the rest of this entry »

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Butlins Tweetup June 2009

In Video on June 25, 2009 at 12:57 pm

On 20 June 2009, a select group from the London Twitterati led by Paul Carr and Robert Loch descended on Butlins in Bognor Regis. This is what happened. If you haven’t read Paul’s column yet, do that first.

NB: This video was thrown together *very* quickly – so it’s a bit rough around the edges :)

Thanks to Paul Walsh for organising the weekend (even though he didn’t show), Kevin Dixie for playing Dad (even though he bailed early) and most importantly Sara-Jane Brown, Kalina Chin and Jae Hopkins from Butlins for showing us such a good time.

Follow @yiannopoulos and @kevindixie for information about Butlins Tweetup, Part Deux! We’ll be arranging a second trip – this time to Minehead – later in the year.