Twitter Engagement and Authenticity

A few days ago I wrote a blog about engagement with thought leaders who post Twitter. I also wrote about Twitter often seemingly being oriented toward broadcast-only.

I have a thought more about this and what I value first and foremost is authenticity. I want to see posts from and engage with persons and entities in near-real-time, not merely be placed at the nozzle end of a firehouse pouring out tweets and links.

I have begun slowly un-following people who spray large volumes of posts but do not engage other twitterers via the reply function. While there is nothing inherently wrong with being broadcast-only, if you are not sharing information that improves my understanding of areas that are complex or lie outside my knowledge base, why should I expend precious bandwidth on you?

Those who spew torrents of tweets without looking back are of no value to me. Those who are high-volume, interesting/horrifying/thought-provoking/infuriating tweeters but who also choose to engage and defend/explain/retract their tweets are the beating heart of Twitter. Think what you will of the analysis or politics of @TheStalwart (Joseph Weisenthal), he presents information and theories that challenge one to think. Equally important, he will respond to challenges, questions, and differing perspectives. He is authentic, and that is the sort of Twitterer I seek out. Others like @ericjackson and @reformedbroker who, like Weisenthal, are financial and market experts that have taken the time to help an economic novice like me understand concepts from the POV of an market insider that would otherwise be inaccessible to me. I'm more learned for the experience.

Further, I've not found any of the aforementioned trio pre-posting tweets. They appear, at least to me, to be investing the time to tweet real-time instead of resorting to HootSuite, TweetDeck, or similar to put up a lawn sprinkler of orphaned tweets. Again, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with pre-positioning tweets if all you want to do is push messages out. However, I believe that you are cheating yourself and your followers out of potentially enlightening engagement if the bulk of your tweets only serve your agenda of putting X in front of readers. You'll earn enough replies, RTs, Mts, and favorites to drive up your Klout (or similar), but it's an empty accomplishment.

It is authentic to tweet with people, not at them and engage as you do so. Otherwise how different from robo-calling is what you are doing?

Message Boards and Forums--Still Relevant

One of the oldest forms of online social media is the message board. I'm sure that many younger users of social media would disagree that forums/message boards/groups are not social media as it has been defined by Facebook, Twitter, et al.

However, I view online social media as any place where people can gather to exchange information, ideas, images, and share experiences. Message boards also have their own rudimentary version of curation; it is not as immediate and user-friendly as Instagram or Pinterest, to be sure. However, the searchable messages, file folders, and photo albums of the richer forums (think: Yahoo Groups) are most certainly the antecedents of the sharing and life-casting that we do on their modern descendants.

The Yahoo Group I run has been in place since June of 2005. It has nearly 5,000 members, averages at or over 1,000 moderated messages a month, and large numbers of photos and files the members can access. The Group recently passed 50,000 messages posted and the archives contain all posts in the history of the Group (unless deleted by the poster or moderator) in a searchable format. This is a highly-focused, very specific Group, yet is very active. Many sub-cultures and specialized interest discussion groups still rely on this hoary, old, but effective system to connect with like-minded people.

There is still value in the 20-year old forum/message board/group format. It should be recognized as part of the biosphere of the social media environment and-when possible-linked to its flashier, more in-the-moment relatives. Remember, with the advent of internet alternatives telephone chat lines were thought to be dead, but they have returned and are still part of the landscape. Don't underestimate older internet social media that still has a role to play, and to ignore them is to miss opportunities.

Dinosaur of Curation-Not Yet Extinct

The recent change of CEOs at Yahoo! (('m going to leave the ! off hereafter) seems to be reinvigorating that long-standing (and long-suffering) pioneer of social networking. Some like @ericjackson of Ironfire Capital believe that Yahoo is going to be made relevant again; I have my own reason for hoping this happens.

In the late 1990s, Yahoo Chat was very popular, bringing together people with the wonder of meeting anyone from anywhere in the world to chat about....well, it usually devolved into attempts to get laid and a large amount of trolling. Even so, in 1998 when I booted up my first personal desktop computer from Gateway, it was a wonder to talk with people in India, Germany, and all over the US.

Yahoo also provided what they called "Groups". These were (and remain) message boards with lots of useful tools to build virtual communities. Despite being a relic of Web 1.0, those Groups are still offered by Yahoo and many remain vibrant. I run one of them with a surprising large and active membership of over 4,900 with ~1,000 posts/month. One of the features of the Groups is that all messages, unless deleted by the posting member or moderator, are retained and are searchable. If I want to go back to June 24, 2005, and see the first few posts made to the Group they are easily found and accessed. This curation of messages has been a boon to the members and to me in my role of Moderator.

Sometime in 2011, one or two CEOs ago, Yahoo tried to convert the Groups to more of a Facebook/Timeline appearance. The angry villager rule was invoked and Yahoo quickly reverted the Groups back to the 'classic' Group appearance. Much as the smart phone, iPad, and Macbook each fill a specific niche despite some function overlap, there is a place in the social media/network biosphere for older forum-type applications like Yahoo Groups. It is my hope that this particular dinosaur continues to roam the Mesozoic savannah for many years to come.

Value-Added Aggregation v. The Human Appendix & Colon


One of the things about Twitter that I value is people who tweet articles that I might otherwise never see. In particular, I appreciate news/information aggregators/curators who post links in tweets that take me to:

• Their web page, which has the article/blog displayed and preserved for curation;
• Their web page, which has the article/blog displayed (whether preserved for curation or not);
• An article/blog web page from a reliable source (Economist, Forbes, etc.);

and so on. This is often enhanced by an observation or commentary to frame the tweeter's perspective or insights, which is value-added aggregation (sometimes with curation).

However, I have encountered something else recently: faux-aggregators. A faux-aggregator offers a link to an article/blog of genuine usefulness. However, when you click the link, it does not send you directly to the article or bring you to their web site hosting of the article, but instead sends you to their site. When you arrive, you find that the article is not displayed. Rather, one or two sentences from the article (usually the lead) are present with another link to the article on its actual host site.

Thus the faux-aggregator drives traffic to his site and gets credit for sending traffic (you) to other sites, but adds nothing of value whatsoever through his intervention. The faux-aggregator merely inserts himself between the reader and the genuine provider of the information. This renders the faux-aggregator as either the human appendix (useless but troublesome) or the colon (a place through which things pass but no nutrition is derived).

Genuine aggregation and/or curation can provide a great boon to people seeking information in a crowded internet. Faux-aggregators add nothing.

Klout-Why I Give K and What It Means


Because I am interested in all things social media, it seemed natural to sign up for Klout.  The premise seemed simple enough: I would link my various social networks to Klout, and it would give me a 1-100 score on how 'influential' I was through those networks. Of course I was skeptical about the accuracy of their algorithm, but since everyone on Klout was being rated by (presumably) the same metrics, the scores would at least be consistent within its own reality. 


Since that time I have read articles about people with moderate-to-low Klout scores being unsuccessful in job interviews for social media positions, something I found both puzzling and concerning. I also have seen a certain amount of gnashing of teeth and wailing in the (inter webs) wilderness about the (in)significance of Klout scores, and in some cases actual anger about them.


Instead, consider a simple way of viewing Klout: through the prism of authenticity. I interact with persons of interest, gather information and wisdom, and put out messages I believe are important. Since my networks reach across multiple social media platforms anyway, I chose Klout as a sonobuoy of sorts, pinging away to let me know when I was neglecting my interlinked social network activities. The key is to be authentic and let Klout reveal things to you rather than manipulating it simply to increase an already-suspect rating. Remember, by observing something, you may change it. 


On Twitter I follow people whose thinking and writing interests and challenges me. As I wrote before, I use Twitter to engage with thought leaders and others with whom I have no venue other for interaction. When those people say things that move me, I keep them in mind when I log into Klout. Part of the Klout experience is being allotted X number of "Ks" that I can award to others on Klout and which they can in turn award to others. I 'give K' to those persons as an expression of my appreciation for what they bring to the Twitter experience. The problem lies with people who 'give K' with the expectation that they will in turn be given K by those persons. As with anything authentic, it is best to give K as a gift: no strings attached and no expectation of reciprocation.


How do you choose to give K?

The Problem of "What's Next?"


In a meeting today, colleagues voiced concern about our organization lagging in the use of social media. They remarked upon what they had heard anecdotally about the 'un-coolness' of Facebook and describing how young users supposedly were fleeing it in favor of "places their parents don't go".


As I listened to them and then told them of our expanding Twitter footprint and the success we are beginning to garner, I was struck by the problem (perceived and real) of "What's next?". Our organization's focus is not social networking, but it is a tool that I believe is vital to accomplishing parts of our mission. The amount of resources we can devote to it is minimal, though, so any idea of being ahead of the curve is moot. Following clientele from network to ever-more-fragmented network is likely not a wise use of time and resources.


That said, mature social networks with a strong foundation and large following (Twitter, Facebook) are an excellent place for us to reach our audience. By leveraging our use these social networks, we can multiply our messages and gain the attention, trust, and partnership of our followers. In my opinion, we gain nothing by pursuing the latest and hottest, rushing into social networks we do not yet understand fully. It is better that we lag slightly, let the early adopters figure it out, then decide if it fits our ethos, image, and mission.


It is crucial that we be aware of and understand the latest and most influential sites, platforms, apps, and social networks. We can achieve this by scanning the environment and investigating these things on an ongoing business. I believe we can solve the problem of "What's next" by observation, tracking, and slow adoption.


What's next for you?

Engage With Experts and Thought Leaders on Twitter

Though I am only an autodidact in economics, I have a great interest in understanding how the U.S. economy works. This is one of the reasons I follow the Twitter feeds of people like @thestalwart, @hblodget and @ericjackson. They talk about things with which I agree, things with which I don't, and others that expand my knowledge into new areas. I don't want to be a mere potted plant sitting idly by, so I step into the conversation to challenge, ask, and learn. So should you.


To their credit, each of the persons listed above (and many other luminaries) have been willing to engage with me and others. I appreciate the generosity they show with their time and knowledge. When talking about economics or policy, I do my best to remain apolitical so that we remain focused on the idea and information. That makes it less likely that honest disagreements about philosophy will turn into ad hominem attacks or be clouded by political affiliations.


The real risk of such engagement is the difficulty in displaying nuance. While the 140-character limit often forces an elegant, pithy brevity, it also can breed misunderstanding. The best thing to do is to focus on the question/issue and ignore things that are irrelevant to it. If the twitchat degrades, simply walk away.


I have no fear of challenging conclusions or underlying assumptions about the articles, graphs, and other data these power-Tweeters share. Perhaps I can share a different perspective with them, maybe they will show me that I have a hole in my reasoning, or that I am just flat wrong. No matter what, I will exit the interaction knowing more than when I entered it. You will be too.

Twitter: Broadcast, Engage, or Both?

Twitter seems to work best when used as an amplifier for messages, set to 'broadcast only' if you will. However, to get messages out and move people to action (or at least thought), one must have followers who will re-broadcast and propagate those messages. If not, one is shouting inside an empty room.

This would suggest that if one is not already famous (Peter Gabriel, Salman Rushdie, et al), one will have to build up credible connections (follows and followbacks) with people who have an interest in the ideas and topics about which one will post. This should be done with genuine engagement, however, not merely to accumulate a herd of meaningless, random connections.

However, having meaningful engagement through a froth of posts from those whom one follows is a challenge. I only follow 167 persons/organizations currently, and keeping up with the Twitter feed is like drinking from a fire hose. I cannot fathom what it would be like to have thousands of followers. Letting my imagination free, it makes sense to me that if I were mega-famous (Angelina Jolie), I could only pick an occasional tweet to respond to personally and any other responses would be performed by staff assistants. I served on a thought leader's Twitter chat once and a team of 12 people handled incoming questions with the leader answering only a select handful, some of those with messages I and others craft. This is a common practice for busy, important people who still try to have some level of engagement.

That is the nut of Twitter's paradox: accumulate enough followers to get your messages out, and you cannot effectively engage with your audience, at least not on your own. Limit your followers and follows to a focused group, and your message may not escape the cadre. It is possible that *if* you have the right follows/followers, they will be influential enough to perpetuate your messages.

For now, I have chosen to follow only two kinds of persons:

• People whose ideas/thinking interest me regardless of whether we share belief systems (keeps me intellectually honest and challenges me)
• People who have chosen to follow/support/engage with me despite a lack of common interests (this broadens my knowledge and expands my areas of interest)

I will drink from the firehouse until I figure out how to regulate it.

False: Social Networking and Mobile Have Obliterated Work-Life Balance




Saw this from @Armano on Twitter: "Social networking and mobile have obliterated the work-life balance." This is a false construct, a proposition built on an erroneous perception of what work-life balance is.


First: Though many of us are wired at work and at home for social media (literally and figuratively) as part of both our work and social life, the great majority of people are not. We are are woven tightly into the fabric of the social networks in both work and personal worlds and are something of a rarified cadre.


Secondly, I don't see an issue of work/life balance with social media. The work/personal overlap allows me the flexibility to be in contact with my family and friends during work hours, but also affords me the opportunity to work or hone my skills during off time if needed. Each of those overlaps, however, is my choice and I get to choose how much and when I do it. 


To me, work life balance means that I am getting enough of each in proportion. There does not have to have a bright line separation with one completely divorced from the other for me to have balance. 

Yet another Cassandra is crying "Facebook is dying!"

I remain skeptical about such jeremiads because I find the reasoning to be faulty. Frankly speaking, Facebook is unprecedented, so it's probably wrong to use standard metrics to define whether it is failing. Consider these points:

• Social media is still evolving. We don't yet know what normal looks like.
• Facebook is a behemoth in terms of users, so something astonishing will have to happen to cause a significant migration away from it.
• Given the stock structuring, Facebook is Zuckerberg's show just as he intended.

Bullet 1: Clearly, social media is migrating to mobile with the explosive development of very smart phones and tablets. Whether Facebook can develop or buy the right mobile platform will determine whether it is able to migrate along with its users.

Bullet 2: Slowing membership growth for Facebook is inevitable due to the finite number of people who live on the planet with sufficient access to the internet to make use of it. That does not worry me. The question that should haunt Facebook's leadership and development team is: what is the thing that will cause us to lose members or cause them to spend less time on the site? The absence of a user-friendly mobile GUI for Facebook only hurts if someone creates one that is simple, attractive, and intuitive and does everything that Facebook does so much better than people are willing to try to drag their entire social media world (friends, apps, documetns, images, etc.) to another platfrom and start fresh. That has not yet happened. And unless that alternate choice allows easy importation of all of those things, it is unlikely that large, overlapping social networks are going to up and leave for an unknown.

Bullet 3: Zuckerberg has never put profitability ahead of his beliefs. I am firmly convinced that he has no interest in generating significantly more revenue than is needed to sustain/perpetuate Facebook. Those who saw Facebook as a quick-profit buy or expect fountains of future revenue to gush out through dividends will likely be thoroughly disappointed. It's not as if he hasn't made that clear from the first day on the Harvard campus, so others' dreams have nothing to do with his. His behavior suggests he does not see huge profits as necessary to achieve what he wants: connectedness of the human graph and radical transparency. He is not stupid, he knows that he will need capital to buy things that Facebook needs, but the company is already large and profitable enough to do that.

So, that all said, Facebook is still large, profitable, and seems determined to remain relevant. IPO failings (not of Facebook's making) aside, there is nothing happening below the daily stock market froth to make one believe that Facebook will not remain the social media leader for years to come, especially given its increasingly close relationship to Apple.

As Facebook prompts us on our home pages: "What's on your mind?"