Well yes there are lots if good reasons to open up a twitter stream to the public, here are a few:

• It’s really easy for people to decide to connect with you if they can read your previous tweets.
• It can be handy for the odd self promotion and the digital footprint if people can connect with you easily.
• You can build a better community around you of like minded people if you are easy to connect to.
• You can have more conversations with a greater community.
• You can integrate your twitter stream with all sorts of cool tools using the twitter API  with ease.

It’s Not that I Don’t Like You

Okay that’s good, yes you can engage with people easier if you have a public twitter stream.  But there is also a good number of reasons for not having a public  twitter stream such as:

• Google – This is the primary reason that my stream is private, I don’t want any Google bots spidering and indexing my tweets.  I don’t what any of my tweets being used out of context or being lodged in the grand Google repository of knowledge for evermore.   Of course this would be solved if Twitter had a no index option for each  account.
• SpamBots – Whether they are real people or bots, you get other twitter accounts following you just so they can direct message spam you.  With an open stream you get this a lot more than a closed on.   Easiest thing to do is restrict their access.
• Auto Follow Bots – It’s amazing, If I tweet about coffee, suddenly ten coffee bots start to follow me, this auto following trend on an open stream is a real pain.  These are not real people, just some programing script..  Sure the twitter crew cull them from time to time, but really I just don’t want some random non person following me.
• Auto Publish Bots -  Just like Auto Follow bots there are now auto publish bots that detect various keywords in the public stream and retweet your tweet they have  detected or even quote the tweet in a blog style entry somewhere.   Now that means we can all be constantly taken out of context  even more. Now this doesn’t happen with a private account.
• The Creeps –  Now I don’t get this much, but I know a lot of my female friends on twitter get some weird creeps following them, some just outright digitally stalking them.  These people are often just end up being blocked.  With a private stream you restrict who follows you.
• Social Media Experts – These are another breed of experts people that have suddenly appeared on Twitter. Seems they are out to teach me how to use online social networks, with their all of five minutes experience.  I really think these people need to reconsider their approach to social media.  Maybe folks like me that have been around for a while do get it.  It’s just we don’t be blowing our trumpet all over the relevant social networking sites about it.   Best way to  avoid these people is control their connection into you community, like the creeps above.
• My Community – I know it’s all about community, but the social network is centered around me, it’s my social network.   It would be nice if I had control who can easily listen in on my network.  Who is in that community.   I want to ensure that they are relevant to me.   I want to know the people in my conversation, I want to select the people around me.  Seems a little anal or self centered, is it really. Consider all the other social networking sites, you get to select who you can connect with, so why should Twitter be any different.  Think about it, your social network isn’t for your neighbour or the kid down the road it is for you.   So you should have a say in it.

It’s Private, but Just Ask.

Sure my twitter stream is set to private.   Yes its not that private, as my followers can access my tweets so my privacy is only as good as my community.  But my followers aren’t the nasties listed above.  They are the reason I’m on twitter for the community.

So if you think you belong in my community and we have a common interest, go on request to follow me.   I don’t bite.

For a while there it really did look like Twitter wasn’t going to make it over the fail whale. But here we are on the tail end of another South by South West conference  and Twitter isn’t missing a beat.

To make things all a little strange, now we have Facebook morphing into a twitter clone, well at least interface wise it is.

Still with all this and the newbies coming on board a few guidelines about twitter would help smooth things over:

1. You will generally only get out of Twitter what you put into it.  It’s the ultimate extension of the expression of paying it forward.  The  more you share information, help people and generally build community around you, the more your network will respond in turn.
2. When you setup a Twitter account, there are a number of things you really should do, to have it easier for people to get to know you.   Please fill in the profile description and the website link (even to the facebook profile is good).   These help people who you want to follow you determine if it is worthwhile or not.
3. Building the network of followers is important, you want to attract people that are going have like interests or from similar professional spheres.  The  best people generally are people that are already paying it forward, as indicated in point one.
4. Likewise, it’s a good idea to follow people that have interests that are the same as you.  Sure you can follow a few celebrities.  But trust me here, they are usually no more interesting than you and me, in fact often they are less so.   We just think they are “more interesting”.
5. Also  don’t expect the people that are building up follower lists of over 10,000 or people to be that engaging or even care that you exist.   Sorry to them twitter is an amusing toy to pass a few minutes at day and  feed their ego.
6. Personally I would avoid anyone who is proclaimer a “social media expert”, even if they do have thousands of followers.  Like others have said there is no a restriction on stupidity or lack of common sense.  Twitter suddenly over the last few months has become full of these experts.   If you are looking for people in this sphere these ones are not it.
7. There are spammers on Twitter too.   Generally they have an extremely high ratio of followers to followed people and post just links. You’ll get a recognize them, they are easier to spot on Twitter.
8. Some people make their Twitter streams (a collection of twitter posts) private.   Some people say this is against the networking nature of Twitter and it’s just plain silly.   Well everyone will have their own person reasons. It’s a good idea to respect them.  Maybe they have made their twitter account private  for general personal privacy reason, restricting Google from indexing their tweets (posts) , avoiding relatives, work colleagues or the like or maybe other reasons.
9. When using Twitter I wouldn’t constantly repeat, rebroadcast or “retweet”  links from other people to your audience of followers all day long.   This is a little rude as you are only providing a second hand conversation.
10. Similarly don’t  just feed or post links from your blog or news service to twitter.   Unless you have set the account up as a news service account, and state this from the outset.
11. Be very aware that in different places in the world people use Twitter differently.   In Australia it is more about the conversation, when in England, Canada and the US it is more about stating what is happening in your life etc, more micro blogging.
12. When following people it is good idea to say hello and introduce yourself to them. This helps remove any conversational barriers and confirms you as a real person, not an automated twitter bot.

I’m sure there are a lot  more helpful hints for using Twitter effectively, if you think of any please add them below.  It will be very interesting where Twitter will be in 2 more years.

If you think about it Twitter is a bit of a walled garden, a closed system as Sean Carmody has pointed out.  You have to be on Twitter to use Twitter; a little like Facebook or AOL.  Maybe what we need to step beyond Twitter into an open message distribution service, this would help with the load issue if nothing else.

Stepping beyond the walled garden will allow services like Twitter to jump the shark and avoid the problems AOL had. They were popular with the early adopters to start with, then the mob got bored and moved on, the shininess and gloss just waned away.

So are there any other alternatives we can glean a model off:

The Clones

So with Twitter we get the clones (Pownce, Jaiku and Kwippy ), with a few add on features, do they really give us anything new?  Maybe not.  Okay Pownce is a little more, but it’s still a little like Twitter in outlook.  Still they are all closed communities.  You can’t message from one into the other.

Then we have identi.ca, based on the Laconica system.  Still this is very Twitter based clone service.  You can have your own server true, but it’s still closed. We don’t see identi.ca messages in the other services. Edit 2 Sept – I have since been informed you can if you set up your own service.   Okay so that’s a start.

All these services have made some degree of  traction but really nothing major, people have tended to check them out, maybe add them to their distribution services like Ping.fm. But basically people just move on, leaving nothing but an echo.

FriendFeed

People are saying FriendFeed is the next big thing.  Well maybe not, on a personal level I’m beginning to find FriendFeed a pain to use.   There is just too much noise from some A-listers that I’m not subscribed too that seem to sneak in from one friend or the other.  It’s to the point that the normal conversation and feeds from my real network are just being swamped.  This makes the service a little pointless, I just don’t have the time to trawl through the A-list chaff.  So realistically this model isn’t really cutting it, even if it is a little open, in a way.

Plurk

Previously I have questioned if Plurk had what it takes to continue.  Two months later and the service has matured.  It has been busy building a small community. It’s not microblogging at all, more like a thread based IRC than anything.   However again it’s a closed community.  You can’t continue a conversation from Plurk on anything but Plurk.

The Solution

What is really needed is an open API driven Open Messaging service, a true commenting open service that will allow you to have a conversation from one service to another.  For example you can send a comment to Twitter, converse with someone in Plurk, read other comments from Friendfeed all from whatever one you choose.

Realistically that’s going to take a community effort the likes of OpenID or OAuth, and even then you would have to convince the companies concerned that it was in their interest to adopt this type of messaging system. Still it’s a nice idea.

Edit 2 Sept -  There is a protocol in development – OpenMicroBlogger.  I think it needs to get out there and be promoted a bit.

Yeah you know I have ranted about Twitter and it’s  messaging service for a while now.  Well Twitter has had a few issues scaling and the like.   Remember it’s not your standard web application, it’s a many to many messaging service.

Anyway besides the ongoing Fail Whale saga, this morning via an email the Twitter team announce that they are turning off the SMS side of the service, except in certain countries.   And yes you guessed it Australia is one of those to get it in the neck.

But to add insult in injury the email doesn’t even bother to even mention Australia or New Zealand.  Maybe it seems the Biz Stone and the folks at Twitter don’t think we are that important here on the ends of the earth.    Oh that’s right how stupid of me we are not in the US of A, so we don’t count. It was nice to see at least the Twitter blog remembered that we exist.  Still I’m not impressed!

I can understand why they are doing this as the SMS costs that they are bearing would relatively high, however what is wrong with talking with Telstra (like there is anyone else) and brokering a deal before you cut the service.   They seem to have done this in Canada, which has telco issues as bad as ours (so I’m told).

There is a distinct lack of understanding of the use of Twitter in Australia it seems.   Many people use Twitter as an informal social SMS network.  Allowing friends to contact them via Direct Messaging sent via an SMS without the friends/contacts having to have their Mobile number, whether this be on a local or international level with the twitter service as it was, it didn’t matter.

All the alternatives suggested require web access.  Again it’s assumed we all have the web all the time every where.  Sorry Biz, massive fail – wrong!   Especially in Australia where the 3G coverage is limited to the capital cities at best.

So what can we do.  Well we can bitch and blog about it, have your say on Get Satisfaction, and generally make noise.

A good 12 months ago you could depend upon a a solid core of your social network to be centralised on several common social networking sites, such as flickr, twitter, facebook, linkedin. Things where relatively stable, well as much as they can be. Comments on one sns stayed on that sns, comments on a blog, stayed on the blog. The core of the sns mob would from time to time go explore a new sns, sometimes integrating it into the group of core sites sometime not.

That was Then

That was then, as Nick Cowie has pointed out with his person usage, online social networking is changing. As more and more and of the sites move out of their early adopters phases and start to experience growing pains  (yes twitter is an example) they can start to loose their appeal, be it from service interruption, gaining mainstream appeal or just lack of the coolness of being shiny and new.  Hence the mob starts to move away, it’s not on mass like rats from a sinking ship, but a slow bleed.

Yes, social networking online has changed. As you would expect it has morph and transformed as the online communities have embraced the changed in the online environment.

Is it Distributed?

With this type of change it’s no longer centralised or decentralised, its more just distributed.  Your community is spread not just over a few services but now four, five, ten when does it end, be them Plurk, Plaxo, Bright Kite, Identi.ca, Seesmic and so on.  You just can’t be expect to keep up with all these aspects.  Can you?   Sure you can use ping.fm, hello.txt or MoodBlast (locally) to pump out your status update with an echoing shotgun across the networks.  But that only allows for the output.

Well as was pointed  out a few years back what we need is a lifestream aggregator, such a Friendfeed or Plaxo.  Both these services offer to republish your existing feeds and allow comments on your lifestream.

So now you recollect the community on these services, but they are not aggregating the comment feeds on these aggregated lifestream feeds.  Although they do promote the use of comments on there centralised location.

Hence the problem remains if you want to get the full picture of the community discussions you still have to visit all the respective sites.  So all the lifestream aggregators have really done is add a layer of complexity to it all, the conversation is still distributed like it was on blogs etc.

Are There Solutions

What we need is a conversation and comment aggregator.  Even so consider the noise level, at present services like Friendfeed aren’t too bad, but if you get the feeds of friends friends activated then it becomes a little overwhelming.  Especially if those people are the usual noisy self appointed A-listers.  That’s what the  block function is for, it brings back the sanity.

Sure you can make your lifestream pretty looking with swurl.  Or you can use interface tools like feedly to make the localised feed aggregation via Google Reader that much more usable.  But still the comments are all over the place.

We need a tool that is going to follow the chain of links to the comments and bring them together in a virtual sense so you can see the conversation in one place. Now maybe idAuth can help to a degree, but like OpenID and OAuth it has to take traction.   As after all it’s about the conversation and community.  What good is a distributed conversation.  Maybe socialthing is the answer. But then it’s more a social network manager.

So what do you think has it changed for you, is it for the better, just different, or are you going to just give up and go sulk in some hole in the ground?

Twitter Meetup

Of note is Perth’s first Twitter Meetup or PTUB. On Sunday 28th October, 3pm at the Belgian Beer Cafe.

Technorati Tags: perth, podcamp, podcampperth, perthpodcamp, twitter, PTUB, , social+networking, new+media, unconference

We all know about twitter. if you have been reading this blog for a while you would have come across a few posts on twitter. A while back in May 2007 I wondered if we would be using twitter at Web Directions South 2007 or OZ-IA 2007 in September. Well with less than a month to go to these events it would appear that twitter is in for the long haul. Interesting and amusing things from twitter recently:

• 1000 Monkeys

  The genius developer Andrew Tetlaw surfaces with his 1000 Monkeys Twitter API implementation. Very funny go check it out.

• Twitter Groups

  People have been talking about this for a while. So taking a leaf out of the Pownce, Chris Messina has suggested a method of implementation tag channels in Twitter. Looking at this closely I can’t really find any major problems with implementing it. What do you think? Personally I prefer the proposed groups implementation from the twitter fan wiki using the “g” pre-directive.

• Twitter Etiquette

  Well we could all do with some from time to time a little Twitter Etiquette. Given this Sue Waters has put together a wiki to help build a centralised Twitter Etiquette knowledge base. Go on race over and add your contribution.

Technorati Tags: twitter, twitter+groups, twitter+etiquette, Pownce, twitter+api

You know the drill you have to work out if your friends are on there yet. Is it going to be appealing, will your friends adopt this application. Do you invite them or not. If they are there, what email or username are they under. If finding your fiends isn’t enough, there is the whole communications aspect of the social network.

As Jeremy Keith and Derek Featherstone have all discussed a while back, what we need is a way to control the relationships and your authorisation from a central resource we can control (like your blog). So now Kevin Lawver comes to the rescue with news that someone is at least attempting a solution with OpenId and OpenAuth. Okay OpenAuth is a little closed in with AOL, but at least it’s a start in the right direction. Can OpenID and XFN with a little hCard microformat magic finally be the social networking savour as opposed to glue application like FindMeOn. Well networks like Dopplr are at least having a go, as are others. This is generally good to see, any progress in making it easier to link up again with your network will allow an online system to endure.

I was just running through all the social networks I have profiles on. Most of the time I have just allowed the profile to rot and stagnate or I have just deleted the profile if the network has really proved to be not suited to my current requirements. Maintain the information across all these social networks is just impossible give the modern time constrains we are all under.

But where do these social networks fail where do they let us down. Its in the simple things, the communication and interface, the interaction. Maybe we can all learn something from a quick look around the social neighborhood.

• Twitter

  Yes, I have discussed Twitter before at length. But lets look at the point that it does allow people to communicate across SMS, Web, XML based applications be they on the desktop or on a mobile device (PDA or phone). This a think that Jaiku only does to limited degree. One thing twitter does not do well is allowing you to re-find your friends. It could also do with groups and the ability to send a message to a group of friends, oops followers. Simply Twitter maintains the communication chain between users, this is its power, its drawcard.

• Pownce

  Michael Arrington has said that Pownce is the Twitter killer. All this talk is on the wrong track. Yes Pownce is like Twitter in that it has desktop applications. But its across various media and really is based on communication of information not information communication. It’s about the sharing of information (links, files, short messages, discussions) between groups of friends. But even Kevin Roses’ baby Pownce has problems, its impossible to block or remove unwanted spammers or e-stalkers. There is no SMS, no RSS feeds, the notifications point to the web site, breaking the communication chain. Well we know why the communication chain is broken, as Thomas Vander Wal points out, its all dollars and site stickiness. Really just minor points, but you don’t want too many of them. On the upside, re-finding people on Pownce is very easy, with an added plus of the the friends of friends feature. This is something Facebook and a few others could do with looking at.

• Gleamd

  To be fair Gleamd it’s still in private beta. However it’s a cruel brutal world in the social networking, users are extremely disloyal. This application is a classic example of when you really need to take on the skills of an interface designer. Nearly every aspect of the sites interface design has a major flaw. Really they are all nothing major, but the combined effect of these flaws transmutes this application into a barely usable web site. I do hope they take the advice people have given them and stop operating under fiscal restraint.

• Facebook

  The media have touted that Facebook is becoming the next MySpace. Others like John Kirriemuir have examined why it works and is successful. But Facebook is more than a pretty MySpace clone like Virb. It is a walled garden, a closed community or maybe its something else as Duncan Riley thinks, with a locked down network it can become the web application OS of the future.

  This all may come to pass. But Facebook fails in one major aspect. When it communicated with you to notify you of an event, message or such it just emails you. Not the message, but just a notification to go back to Facebook. So you have to login again , find the message and read it. Not so bad maybe once a day. Have it happen several times a day and you start to get a little frustrated with Facebooks immature attempt at being sticky. Also it would be nice if Facebook allowed people to retain a login until they logoff, not till the end of the browser session. Facebook breaks the communication flow.

• Bebo and MySpace

  Is it just me or is Bebo full of people under 15, and like Myspace is just another teenage hang zone with some really creepy spammers and a few social misfits.

• MyBlogLog

  Yahoo purchased MyBlogLog and everyone had high hopes that Yahoo could breath new life into the social networking site. Sadly nothing much has changed. The magnitude of spammers is the same. MyBlogLog is just too much work on average to leverage any advantage out of the social network it is fostering. It just seems to work like a sexist meat market. Put an avatar up on a corresponding profile of sexy young girl, ideally with lots of flesh or exposed breasts and yes you will get lots of friends and lots of hits. Is this prudish on my part, no not really, I just think it’s a little immature and sad. Again MyBlogLog doesn’t get the messaging, you have to visit the site to find out what is happening. This again breaks the communications flow with your “friends”. Correction – yes It does have the communication flow, but it is the type of people from the community that frankly I just don’t have any trust in.

• LinkedIn

  Well Linkedin does get it to a degree. You don’t get the communications chain broken as much, which is good. But connecting up with people can be hard. It does tend to rely on email as the linkage between contact a little too heavily. However this on a the plus side does ensure a degree familiarity between the contacts.

Do any of the social networks have it right? Have we discovered the perfect model. Is there a perfect web2.0 (sic) social networking application or is that just a crock of gold at the end of the intraweb rainbow. Are we asking way to much to want to have easy re-findablity of our friends and to be in control of the communications flow. I think not.

Update: Tantek Çelik has put together a Social Networking Portability Wiki on the Microformats site. Go read and support, nice concept.

Technorati Tags: Pownce, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, MyBlogLog, LinkedIn, Gleamd,FaceBook, SocialNetworking

It was a little amazing last night (WST-AU) Twitter had been a little flaky, but at least it was operational. Then “it” started, someone was talking about alternatives to Twitter. Slowly but surely people went and checked out Jaiku, signed up, collected their friends, of course this meant more of their friends signed up as well. The wave of Jaiku signup spam started to lap my email inbox. Within 12 hours my lonely old Jaiku account had gone from 5 odd contacts on Jaiku to a modest 40 odd. It was just amazing to see the power of the peer group. People not wanting to be left out, not wanting to be out of the loop, just in case people did migrate to Jaiku. Often the Jaiku sign up was followed by the statement:

Just looking at Jaiku, I still like Twitter, just having a look.

It was a bit like lemmings going over a cliff. People were signing up at a rapid rate. The funnier thing was that the trend jumped timezones, the “just checking out Jaiku” continued from the OzPack into the the BritPack, and then onto the US. I suppose we geeks like to have a backup system.

Well Twitter has been stable for most of today. Adapt there has been a distinct reduction in usage. But what went wrong, well the people at twitter tell us it was just a series of bad software deployments. Makes me think maybe the cats are running the application deployment at Twitter.

During this time the cry went up for Jaiku base desktop tools. They were reviewed and some taken up, some not. So now people have a Jaiku and Twitter account, so if you want to be distracted by both of them, can you have it all in on application or page.

Well help is at hand, Rodney Olsen suggested people go have a look at TwitKu. Despite the plain interface and the Marquee Tag (urrgh) it does the job at hand, allowing dual posting (why if you have a public twitter feed). Most importantly you can see both streams at once.

Did Twitter Jump the Shark? Or were the cats having a very bad series of days.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Jaiku, TwitKu, Downtime, Socialnetworking, Migration

It’s happened before, several times now, and it will happen again. We have had Odeo, SlashDot, Kiko and Friendster. A new social networking style site is the darling of the Internet world, the word on the A-listers lips. Then they couldn’t scale, they couldn’t maintain the traffic and interest that they had generated and the people, the users, walk. Whether it’s because of hardware or software issues or just bad business planning is another matter. But the core is they ignored several key business rules for web startups.

Well over the last four days, Twitter has been non functional more than it has been in the past. It’s been constantly loosing tweets, or missing tweets in the feed, or the servers have just been down (those cats seem to be have been a constant problem). This is Twitters longest period of technical trouble. Maybe I’m seeing more of it; having access when the rest of the world is asleep, and a good period for downtime adjustments, but it has been very flaky.

This has lead to a fair number of people, who are new to Twitter to just abandon it really before they got started. This is not good for any startup company. Or as Miles Burke has suggested maybe a name change in jest, is the way to go. The longer term users of Twitter are also starting to suggest that maybe they should be looking for a better alternative (remember people tell that Gen-Y is fickle).

Now we all know it doesn’t take much, a few key groups start to make a move to another service and the migration of Twitter will be on. It seems the only real alternative is Jaiku and frankly it doesn’t at present have the level of secondary support, that Twitter does There are some more clones, but none like Twitter. However that’s all moot if Twitter doesn’t work. And who is to say what the scaling methodology of Jaiku is like anyway.

The really interesting aspect of this is the dynamics of the application loyalty base and the social implications from the twitosphere. People are genuinely hoping that Twitter can get over this problem and succeed. They also enjoying and finding the service useful from a networking and professional information source viewpoint. However there is a personal pain point for every user on the usability issues. Even within my small circle on Twitter, several people have reached this pain point and have just closed up Twitter and walked away. If there was a solid alternative I’m sure some would have considered migration.

The question is can Twitter jump the shark? or will it be consigned to the annals of Internet history? Has Twitter learn for the lessons of the past, Ev Williams seems to think so. What do you think, will Twitter be here in six months or so? Will we be Twittering at WDS07?

Technorati Tags: twitter, web2.0, startups, wds07,failures, downtime, gen-y, jumpingtheshark