Originally uploaded by Aeioux
(Edit at noon: Make sure you read Jay Fienberg’s post in the comments. He takes this deeper and really hits the important points.)
Yesterday while messing around with my Feedblitz account (part of this whole blog update/move project) I activated something that automatically posts a tweet “from” me each time I post to my blog. Then I promptly forgot about it.
Today I was browsing my tweets and saw this post from me that I did not recall posting. Oh yeah, that automatic thing. It didn’t feel quite right to me, so I asked my Twitterfriends what they thought. This is what they said. My “unease” seems to be validated by my network. So I went and undid that bit of technology. No more autoposts to Twitter. It feels like the cost of promoting awareness, for me, transgresses my relationship with my network. This is a very personal reaction, but I don’t want to cross the line.
@NancyWhite good for notificication purposes but is it really twittering?
catspyjamasnz (catspyjamasnz) via TwitBin at 10:20@NancyWhite auto post of blog entries are fine for bots but work badly for humans, at least until post software gives you more control
Edward Vielmetti (edwardvielmetti) via web at 10:14@nancywhite I use alexking plugin for wordpress and it does not always makes the link (tinyurl) correct. What do u think of tweets in posts?
Christian Kreutz (ckreutz) via web at 10:12@NancyWhite god knows how bad it would be if someone gave me a plugin to Twitt every Last.fm scrobbled song 🙂
David Ramalho (dramalho) via Snitter at 10:10@NancyWhite doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use Twitter to promote the odd post , just that being systematic about it = RSS 🙂
David Ramalho (dramalho) via Snitter at 10:09@NancyWhite Hi Nancy – haven’t used them, tend if relevant post to followers to put up a tweet about it at times! And there’s RSS and others
Laura (LittleLaura) via twitterrific at 10:08@NancyWhite – personally, I don’t like them – that’s what RSS readers are for, IMHO – why should Twitter try to be all things to all people?
Koan (koan) via twitterrific at 10:08@NancyWhite Kinda kill the sense of RSS 🙂 , or extend it to Twitter (but probably abuses it) 🙂
David Ramalho (dramalho) via Snitter at 10:07@NancyWhite – I am not thrilled with the tools that auto post blog entries on twitter. No detail and so it doesn’t seem like conversation.
Jim Benson (ourfounder) via Snitter at 10:07
Somewhat ironically, I just read this because you posted a link via Twitter.
I think the Twitter responses to your question are interesting especially in the “medium is the message” sense: they get across the point that people who follow you via Twitter don’t want messages from a robot claiming to be you. But, lacking space for more extended thoughts, the comments about robots + twitter are pretty shallow with regards to your “promoting awareness” question.
Twitter’s success is significantly tied to the way it eschews hardcoding social conventions. It’s a relatively blank-slate mechanism. So, while, in your social circle, robot-generated-Nancy is seen as definitively inferior to human-generated-Nancy, Twitter, as a mechanism, supports social circles that might exist around robot-generated-so-and-sos as equally as it supports human-generated social circles.
A good analogy is looking at the comments above about RSS. 4-5 years ago, it was not uncommon for people to debate about whether it made sense to include whole posts in RSS, or just headlines, e.g., people would argue that RSS is for notification in the form of headlines / excerpts, but not for full content. As with RSS, Twitter can work for a lot of different things and different uses by different people.
I lean the other way. Several of the people I follow on Twitter post automatic updates whenever they blog something. I like the immediacy of it (I can read what they wrote while it’s still fresh in their head, so feedback is more relevant). And, if I don’t have a moment to read their post, I ignore the tweet and wait for it to show up in my aggregator.
the other day on a listserv someone asked the best way to pitch bloggers. Another person said to go friend all the a-list bloggers and then set up a plugin so that your blog will automatically post to the twitter. I responded that if I see this type of thing – I would unfollow the person. I want to be in conversation with someone on twitter – and in some conversations people do point to their blog posts or other links – but automated responses strikes me a form of spam …
But on the other hand, I realized that it can be efficient. I wonder if there was some way to be selected?
BTW, loving the new look on the blog