quick note on Presence and Etiquette
So the recent post on Twitter Etiquette (and it’s subsequent sequel) over at Global Geek News Blog has created a lot of debate about what is and isn’t acceptable on Twitter or any other micro-blogging services. What’s very interesting is that there’s one thing on which everyone seems to agree:
Don’t post the same thing to multiple services. If you are going to have accounts for all the different services like Utterz and Pownce, post unique messages to each service. Don’t post the same thing to all of the services. Nobody wants to receive the same message multiple times because they follow you on multiple services. Decide what you want to post to what service and stick with it. Don’t post a single message to multiple services.
Which is really good to know. After all, while you’re out there spreading the good word, you don’t want to alienate your audience / fellow-travelers.
I therefore retract the advice I gave in my initial post on Presence, wherein I said:
for instance you can post to Pownce, Twitter, Jaiku and Tumblr in one
Let’s now call that bad form.
It also calls into question the recent update of Twhirl to cross-post your status updates to Jaiku and Pownce; that will only be good for those rude spammers.
However, if the next, or some future iteration of Twhirl can be used to individually update each of the services AND perhaps even munge together all updates from your friends, yes you’d have a unified mircoblogging client.
Technical SideNote: say such a client does evolve and people keep broadcasting to all - it should be a simple matter to write a plug-in to just strip out all duplicates, effectively making this just vanish.
via Sean Bonner (who has his own interesting take on all this too)
Some of my friends use Pownce, some use Twitter. Some use facebook statuses and some use all of the above. I’m comfortable with cross posting against all the services I use because not all of my audience uses all avenues at my disposal. If it were easier to say, host my own custom twitter on my own domain (like many people do with their blogs) that could socially link to all my other friends I would only use that but in a fractured world this isn’t possible.
@Joe - I’m curious, how would you see this ‘custom twitter’ hosted on your own domain helping?
I think there’s an issue of control here. Especially with Twitter, unless you have Protected Updates, anyone can follow you. So, even if you host your own microblogging service that updates to all the services, how do you ensure people are getting duplicate updates?
I think the key is to use each service for a specific use. I’m gonna use Sean Bonner again as an exmple. In a previous post he rounds up his SNS usage in the following way:
Twitter - micro blogging
Facebook - who knows?
Flickr - photos
Pownce - mostly just sharing music
Last.fm - what I’m listening to
Targeted cross-posting is probably forgivable - especially say using to Twitter to update your Facebook status, since for most of us theres less of an overlap between Twitter Follower and the more RealLife-Friends.
For the same reason I generally email my photos to Zannel when I’m out’n'about - for the immediate cross-posting to Twitter and Flickr. But I sure don’t put every photo up through that.
Broadcasting your status updates across all microblogging services just annoys all the fellow-travelers who have a presence on each one. And getting told N-times what your cat is doing is going to have a negative effect.
Yes, it’s a fractured world, but that also means we more uber-users have to negotiate it with care, for fear of scaring the rest from joining in on the fun.
Hm, I kind of agree with the original post, but it makes more sense with your comment as well.
“Don’t post a single message to multiple services.” seems too strong a rule, and certainly twitter->facebook seems useful. But I can certainly agree with “Don’t post the same thing to all of the services.”
Maybe some followers using RSS to stay upto date could use something to eliminate duplicates - this is already possible using Yahoo! Pipes. But there isn’t a way I can think of to knock duplicates off feeds in sites - twitter etc can’t know that a follower has already seen your update on whatever other service.
However, if the next, or some future iteration of Twhirl can be used to individually update each of the services AND perhaps even munge together all updates from your friends, yes you’d have a unified mircoblogging client.
Technical SideNote: say such a client does evolve and people keep broadcasting to all - it should be a simple matter to write a plug-in to just strip out all duplicates, effectively making this just vanish.
That’s what I’m interested in. I want the option to post a single message cross-platform, and to have anyone be able to simply follow Me, on the platform of choice.
It would, of course, eventually evolve into a modular, customizable single entity, which would be able to parse the options and additions from any of it’s other iterations. Being then able to distribute and be formated to any system which would then get it.
Not too hard, right?
If you want the options of a Twitter, or a Pownce, or a SMS-Post-To-IM-Chat-LiveJournal-Facebook service, then they should be able to be moulded together. Find the crux point, stick a lever in there, wedge it apart, and build it back together.
i have different contacts on each of the sites that i post to and the fact that most of these sites post in a different way means that feeding in things from sites that allow larger posts so that they come in as leads or links doesn’t seem that bad. i delete anything that duplicates in my tumblr blog but otherwise i think it is a case of knowing who your contacts are and trusting that they will tell you if you are over-bombarding them.