Plinky: The microblogging apocalypse is upon us
Plinky — a tool to help people come up with things to microblog when they don’t actually have anything to say — has launched. I’ve posted an anti-Plinky rant in response. The gist — but with plenty of links so that you actually know what I’m talking about — is:
[Plinky] is like throwing a cocktail party, getting the conversation going, then encouraging your guests to run out in the street with megaphones spreading their drunken chatter. Except in this case what people are drunk on is not actual booze, but rather the promise of “social media marketing” and “building your personal brand.”
| Categories: Microblogging, Social software and online media | Leave a Comment |
The Twitter fail whale has resurfaced
I’ve had a multi-week service saga trying to get my Dell desktop computer fixed. So I Twittered about the fact that my last email on the matter of multiple freezes/cold reboots per day hadn’t been answered for 3 1/2 days. A Dell representative almost immediately messaged me. Then, like so many service representatives, he asked me to repeat what I’ve said many times before (only now 140 characters at a time).
Except I couldn’t get the direct message through for a while, because I ran into the Fail Whale. Nor is that my first recent encounter with same.
If Twitter goes back to being maddeningly unreliable, I will likely go back to living without it.
After multiple weeks with a malfunctioning computer, I am NOT in the mood for even petty problems like this. Arggh …
| Categories: Twitter | Leave a Comment |
Daniel Tunkelang idealizes Twitter
Daniel Tunkelang has a couple of recent posts decrying what amounts to, at least in his eyes, the abuse of Twitter. (My word, not his.) For example, he writes in criticism of Loic LeMeur:
Twitter is a communication platform, not a marketing platform, and there’s a subtle difference.
But I’d disagree that there’s a bright line separating the two. In particular, I think most business blogs serve or should serve as both, in no small part because the areas of marketing and communication overlap heavily. And in my opinion Twitter (microblogging) and ordinary blogging aren’t that far apart.
Earlier this evening I posted praise of the BI expert Twitter community — of which Daniel is indeed a member — even while admitting that unlike other members, I “follow” too many Twitterers to actually keep up with their posts. Daniel refers to following patterns like mine as an attention Ponzi scheme, Read more
| Categories: Microblogging, Social software and online media, Twitter | 12 Comments |
Enterprise IT experts on Twitter
It was my birthday yesterday (New Year’s Day), and I remarked on Twitter that I seemed to be getting more automated greetings from message boards and the like than I was getting from real people.* Naturally, a number of folks set out to redress the imbalance :), specifically J A di Paolantonio, Rob Paller, Neil Raden, Claudia Imhoff, Gareth Horton, Donald Farmer, IdaRose Sylvester, and Seth Grimes.
*In retrospect that was a silly comment, made soon after midnight while humans were generally either partying or asleep. But it’s the set-up for the rest of this post. 😉
Sheer self-indulgence aside — “Happy Birthday To Me!!” — I see something blogworthy in that. Indeed, it reflects the emergence over the past 6 months or so of one particular Twitter community. Takeaways include: Read more
| Categories: Attensity, Microblogging, Social software and online media, Twitter | 2 Comments |