A VC - Latest Comments in The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

hypermark — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:57:38 -0000

One of the things that complicates this is that there is a wide gradation in individual tweet posting sensibilities; huge distinctions between human post actions and auto (or system generated) tweets; and no measures of reputation or context.

As such, it seems that Twitter (or someone in the ecosystem) could cull tweet data to come up with a user's reputation score based on things like tweet usefulness, accuracy and domain relevance (context) to better guide users. Plus, this same data could be used to expose "handles" so client apps can filter tweets and message payloads accordingly.

The analog that comes to mind is the Whuffie, the reputation-based currency concept in Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Taken together, when you combine Verified User with a Reputation Score, you have some potent currency, and a huge impetus for users to self-moderate their approaches to communicating with followers.

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

Taylor Davidson — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:50:42 -0000

I did that a couple months ago, creating a separate twitter account for blog and comment feeds and anything "automatic", creating some segmentation between "me" and the "bot".

I also created separate RSS feeds from topic areas on my blog to give people more choice on what streams of interests they want to follow; in the end they are all hacks to address the problem that Peter Laudenslager describes in his comment below, of a system where we follow people rather than just facets of people.

I`m not sure if people actually care that I segmented out facets of me, but it makes me feel better :)

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

Donna Brewington White — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:06:51 -0000

Fred -- your transparency is one of the things that keeps me coming back to your blog -- plus the fact that it is delivered to my inbox. I'm on Pacific time so I know that when the updates from "A VC" come through in the wee hours, its time to call it a night (or morning?) -- after reading your latest installment of course. Thanks for this. BTW, I disagree on the number of tweets that is appropriate -- I've even read advice that 20 is a good number. Isn't it the quality of the tweets rather than the number that determines whether it's spamming.? Also, doesn't the person's objective for being on Twitter come into play?

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

Jeff DiStanlo — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:54:59 -0000

WRT twitter scoring algorithm. Seems like most algorithms use the following/follower ratio in some form and I agree that is useful for those with significant amounts of followers (followers of 20k and following 200 surely isn't spam).

However, this is misleading for people with, say, 200 followers. For example, I have ~300 followers and follow ~200. A bad ratio based on standard algos.

However, I don't follow most of the people that follow me. Giving me a decent 'score' based on attracting people due to the merits of what I say. Seems like an algo that calculates the ratio while eliminating cross-following would help out the 'little guy'. And there are lots of little guys, that when aggregated, might have something interesting to say.

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

VintageFilings — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:10:03 -0000

Definitely a fine line - Personally, I like to use twitter as a way to socialize with other professionals in a causal and platonic manner - sharing news stories and personal narrative. I do, on occasion, tweet different specials, deals and events going on but I feel that twitter is not the ideal platform for this type of advertising. Too easy to tune out. Be yourselves....

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

lawrence coburn — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:16:51 -0000

I admire this post. It's brave for you to call out your friend.

As entrepreneurs, there is tremendous pressure on us to grow. But there may even be a business reason (besides the ethical reasons) for not tricking people into sending spam. If we don't regulate / police ourselves, someone else will come in and do it for us. See the Tagged.com situation.

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

fredwilson — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:10:21 -0000

I agree with that last point giordano. I feel four to six works for me but you are right that others can post more frequently and get away with it

Shaq, for example, could tweet forty times a day and I bet his followers wouldn't mind

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

fredwilson — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:08:20 -0000

Good suggestion Ouriel

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

Charlie Fishman — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:07:24 -0000

4 to 6 tweets or you'll send your followers away ...

>> I think that's true. But my tweets aren't really for the followers, they are for me, it is my online diary, where I post links to news stories, to songs I love (via @hypem or @lastfm, etc) ; where I vent, where I rant, where I let my co-workers know where I am at. I hear you there, but it really depends on what you use Twitter for .. I'm not trying to win a 'followers' race.

>> Also re: spamming. Side topic. I'm spending $1.50 per added fan on Facebook. So let's say my CPC is $0.50 on Facebook to advertise my band page. 1 out of 3 clicks leads to an added fan on my Facebook fan page. I like to thank new fans who join by messaging them (directly) a folder of free tracks. After sending about 5 notes to 5 new fans, Facebook informed me I was 'engaging in spam like behavior' and that my account could be suspended. I don't get it. I paid for access to the fans and now I can't directly message them? I love that I can hyper target potential fans and convert a few into real fans using Facebook advertising. But what's the return for me on this advertising investment, if Facebook is going to limit how I can contact these fans.

Regards from SF, Chuck
http://chuck.extendr.com

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

Jeremy Luebke — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:19:10 -0000

Very well said. Disqus has it right.Ask for permission and make it opt-in, and not opt-out.

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

daryn — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:29:59 -0000

True... to some extent, using the user's stream for teasers/invites, and the app's stream for activity, would help that, but it requires good behavior from the service.

Another simple* alternative would be to keep things how they are, but require all applications to register with twitter and authenticate all their tweets, then provide some basic filtering to let the follower squelch certain apps. If everything is opted-in by default, it would work just like today, except you'd have to ability to filter out noise without having to unfollow someone who you otherwise enjoy.

* - Trivializing a hard problem. The concept is simple, the implementation I'd imagine is far from it.

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

fredwilson — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:22:19 -0000

You might like my post today. http://avc.com

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

fredwilson — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:20:20 -0000

Yes. That's what I told seth in an email. This is 'best practices'

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

fredwilson — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:13:17 -0000

Agreed. That's one of the reasons I wrote this post

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

fredwilson — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:12:18 -0000

Turns out there was a choice. I just missed it

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

fredwilson — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:07:12 -0000

Something like that would work well for users daryn, but its not viral enough for the developer of the service

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

fredwilson — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:05:15 -0000

I suggested to seth that the right workflow is to take me to a dialog box where I can rewrite the tweet or even decide against sending it

I get that there's a trade here. But how that trade is executed is a big deal

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

fredwilson — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:04:12 -0000

Thanks

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

fredwilson — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:04:11 -0000

'When software can speak on my behalf'

That's a phrase to sit and think about

Well put

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

DrSophi — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:01:16 -0000

Go ahead and play, have fun, tweet. I'm open.

People on Twitter sometimes forget they are people. They become advice and brand pumping machines. To the extent they allow a bit of their personality into their posts - that's when I choose to follow. The trick is to not let the game, or the brand, or the guru-ness overtake the real person. I like to learn. I don't enjoy being beaten down.

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

falicon — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 11:48:42 -0000

Additive is the key goal I think for these type of things...but I also I think it needs to fall in-line with your existing Twitter behavior (ie. don't encourage people to change a lot about how they are already using Twitter)

This is the approach I'm banking on for the fantasy sports game I just released built on top of twitter ( http://gawk.it ) ... basically it's a game that scores your sports predictions you log via twitter (something a ton of people already do for no real reason or goal anyway) ... and while there's room for people to start spamming their followers I think the long term players will find the right balance between logging predictions (ie. playing the game) and spamming ...

Anyway I guess my point is if you are going to build something like this, you need to not only be as additive as possible, but fall in-line with existing actions as possible ... sounds like the hypem fits both of those criteria very nicely ...

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

kidmercury — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 11:39:48 -0000

not sure this is necessarily a moral issue, in my opinion. black hat SEO, for instance, forces search engines to evolve and improve their algorithm. it's also tricky to define what exactly constitutes this type of "gaming" marketing versus legitimate marketing. something that is considered gaming today can be considered legitimate tomorrow -- i think music piracy is in the midst of undergoing that very type of transformation.

hype machine is creating this game. in my opinion the burden is on them to ensure the game is managed the way they want it to be. if they don't like the incentives they are creating, than they should simply not create them.

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

Mark Essel — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:35:15 -0000

I think the pieces are already there. It's a matter of developers creating the next layer of the Internet stack.
TCP/IP, HTTP, twitter, zemanta, <tag processing="">

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

Mark Essel — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:33:53 -0000

Dead on with contextual usage (I mentioned something similar).

We just have to be careful of businesses that are trying to push the viral aspect of their products. Let users decide what to share through their status streams.

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

Mark Essel — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:27:18 -0000

I'm working on a something now Shana, admittedly it's a very crude first step with no user profile (memory). It's just a consciousness tapping system (using the last thing the user tweeted). If I end up designing the UI alone it will be very simple but allow much richer variation by advanced options, catering to both common and super users. I'm not the right person for UI aesthetics design job.

My plan is to use the best technology that's available in a way that will improve it's natural language and short hand information extraction over time. Zemanta's done a good job of solving the 140-160 characters -> tags and I think they'll continue to do so. The spaces, objects and descriptors help to find broader categories as well as specific keywords.

Giving users a way to help the system learn (memory) will be a strong addition.