Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Qwitter, a tool which informs you when someone unfollows you on Twitter, is likely to break relationships, sometimes before they’ve had an opportunity to prosper. This is the complete opposite to the ethos of the Twitter community.

I first learned of Qwitter (it didn’t have a name at the time) in January, when the developer asked for feedback on the functionality. I thought then, that it was a very smart widgetery piece of functionality. I still like it from a technical perspective. However, I don’t like the idea of a tool that is likely to give some of its users the wrong impression.

How can it give the wrong impression?

1. Some followers subscribe to my RSS feed instead of following on Twitter. I know this because a few of them took to the time to write and say that I shouldn’t be offended if I didn’t see them following me. Some chose RSS so they didn’t miss any of my tweets, whilst others thought I had too much to say and they didn’t want their stream taken up by so many of my tweets.
2. Some people follow/unfollow/follow… depending on the noise level they receive from individuals like me.
3. Some thought they were following me, but weren’t, as the system unsubscribed them for some reason.
4. Some thought I wasn’t following them as they were unable to send me direct messages. I checked and confirmed I was actually following them.

You could argue that Qwitter is a nice way to enable users to nudge friends who they think should be following them, but aren’t. Whilst this might be true for some, it won’t be for most. I’ve been using Twitter for longer than most - before it became a conversational tool. So, I’ve had time to learn all of the above. However, some less experienced, or people with less insight, will undoubtidly get the wrong impression and assume that people have unfollowed them for the wrong reason and without asking why, may reciprocate.

I twittered this morning

Bloggers who think posts which are relevant/warrant ‘trackbacks’ to my blog, should quote the stuff they find interesting…

Within a short space of time, I received 6 emails and DMs (including two from journalists) asking if I was referring to them. To ensure I don’t insult anyone or give the wrong impression, I’ve decided to write a slightly longer explanation here, as Twitter’s restricted 140 characters does little to help right now.

Before I continue, I’d like to explain what Trackbacks are and how to use them, as they’re not fully understood by all bloggers and they’re almost always underutilized. Even the most seasoned bloggers don’t make them accessible so others can reference their work easily.

What is a Trackback?

Why reinvent the Wheel?! Wikipedia has a great description

A Trackback is one of three types of Linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking, and so referring, to their articles. Some weblog software programs, such as Wordpress, Movable Type, Typo and Community Server, support automatic pingbacks where all the links in a published article can be pinged when the article is published. The term is used colloquially for any kind of Linkback.

NB. I’ve not only quoted the origin of my source, I’ve also provided a Linkback to the Wikipedia page. Italics are mine.

How to use Trackbacks

It’s simple. Copy the Trackback URL from the blog to which you are going to reference and paste it into the Trackback field provided on the administration page where you’re writing your post. If you can’t find a URL dedicated to Trackbacks you should use the URL for the post. The rest happens automatically. The author of the post to which you refer, will receive an email notification and their blog post will be updated with a link to your post - assuming they’ve enabled that feature of course.

Trackbacks normally appear within comments - click here to see what they look like on this blog. Displaying Trackbacks provides commentators a platform from which to promote their opinion on their own blog. I’m a fan of people writing their own post which has been inspired by another blogger - but only when they provide an opinion, rather than doing a copy ‘n paste.

Some reasons why you might want to write your own post instead of leaving a comment:

1. Your comment is, in your opinion, too long. (I don’t mind long comments - the comments on one of my posts last year fetched over 17,000 in word count)
2. You feel so strongly about something that you wish to solicit opinion from the readers of your own blog
3. You don’t feel comfortable or like leaving comments

It’s standard practice to provide a Linkback to the post from which you were inspired to write an opinion piece. So make sure you always link to your source.

How to implement Trackbacks on your blog

If you have a blog, my advice is to ensure the Trackback URL is the same as the post URL. This will enable others to copy and paste the URL in the address bar instead of having to go searching for the Trackback link. TechCrunch changed it’s blog to include this obvious feature. Read Write Web hasn’t - Look at this post http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/amazon_buys_shelfari.php - you must scroll down the page to search and find the Trackback, which is http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4747. If they were the same URL you wouldn’t have to go searching and I wouldn’t have just confused you. It’s blogs like this that make Tracbacks more confusing than they ought to be.

When to use Trackbacks to this blog

I appreciate it when people include a Trackback to my blog - it means they rate my opinion on a particular topic and would therefore like me to read their article and potentially post a comment. In fact, I’m flattered - please don’t stop. You just have to look at my tag cloud on the left of this blog to see what’s relevant. Although, you can check out the BIMA and Segala blogs to see what else I write about.

However, some people write posts which are not relevant to me and wish to simply get my attention for some reason. Remember, I get email notifications each time someone links to my blog. If there’s absolutely no relevance I’m going to view it as spam and never return to that blog. Stop doing it. Please.

Earlier today I was contacted by a friend at a major international TV broadcaster - looking for a recommendation for a WAP/Mobile Web development company. My recommended supplier will build the platform that will deliver its entire content for a major brand via mobile. It’s a massive project and they only had 2 hours by which time to appoint a supplier. I hope they get more than 2 hours to deliver the brief.

WAP and Mobile Web are areas close to my heart, as some of you will know - in fact, one of my blog posts on the subject attracted comments that exceeded 17,000 word count from companies such as Google, dotMobi, Microsoft and Opera. So, you’d expect me to rattle off a couple of companies right away, right? No. My mind went completely blank and I couldn’t think of one provider, even though I know lots. So, I sent a message on twitter and emailed Mobile Monday - I did explain that I could only recommend a company I knew. Within minutes I received a direct message (DM) from Tom Hume via Twitter. I know Tom and was delighted to recommend Future Platforms. Tom would have been one of my first choices, if not my first, had I thought about him without the gentle nudge.

Not a bad reason to be on Twitter? That project alone is likely to pay for all of Tom’s time on Twitter. I get asked to recommend agencies and individuals all the time - Twitter is always my first port of call if I need to make an announcement. Isn’t that use case alone, enough to spend a little time on Twitter?

Follow me on Twitter if you want to be driven insane by the noise.

We setup an account for Wubud on Twitter a few months ago to raise some awareness for the company and promised to give away a Mac Air in a prize draw as soon as the account reached 5,000 followers. Numbers increased each time we talked about Wubud but they stagnated as soon as we stopped. So, in light of this and to ensure we give away the lovely kit on this side of the next millennium, we’ve decided to solicit your opinion.

Should we change the rules so that the Air is given away when my personal Twitter account reaches 5,000 followers, or, don’t change anything and continue the competition on the basis of Wubud followers?

By changing to my personal account you no longer subscribe to a product, which I personally don’t particularly like anyway. It will also mean the Air is likely to be given away more quickly as I have just over 1,300 followers. On the down side to changing, it might annoy those who signed up to Wubud and who couldn’t care less about my personal ramblings outside of that particular product.

[Update: if the majority go with the 'change', we'll add everyone who's following Wubud into the prize draw to guarantee that their name is in at least once for their effort]

What do you think? We promise to go with the majority and the final outcome will be announced on the 21st of July 2008.

Feel free to leave your general opinion about product vs person twitter accounts.

This post was inspired by an email I received this morning about an event entitled “Managing the Consumer Clamour“.

The digital industry appears to be split into two in my opinion. The first half is made up of those who don’t talk about ‘managing the consumer’ because they understand the art of conversation - instead, they talk about how to enable a better conversation between brand and consumer. In fact, the best of them aren’t talking about it at all, they’re just doing it as it comes natural.

The other half is made up of old media - they’re still talking about ‘managing the consumer’ and trying to figure out how to control what they say.

You can’t manage the consumer clamour. What you can do, is influence it by making sure you get involved in the conversation. It’s cheaper and easier than ever, with tools readily available to help everyone become a publisher/creator - enabling them to influence the perception of a particular brand. This is normally done through personal blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and other forms of public arenas where it’s easy to publish an opinion for everyone to see.

What should you do?

Stop talking about trying to manage what people say. It’s impossible. In fact, trying to control what people say is worse than doing nothing. Instead, talk about how to get involved by listening to what the crowd has to say and then react accordingly. Soon, you will become proactive by asking the crowd what they think upfront.

If only I was Hugh McLeod. I could capture all of this and more, in one cartoon. Here’s a post by Hugh that’s relevant though.