Comments on: An Attention Ponzi Scheme?

By: ldii

ldii — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:08:27 +0000

I don’t feel the advantage of social network economically. But I feel enjoy connect to each others.

By: Revised Twitter Policy « The Mendicant Bug

Revised Twitter Policy « The Mendicant Bug — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:19:37 +0000

[...] approve of this follow-back practice, while others like Daniel Tunkelang (@dtunkelang) do not. Since I was able to filter my tweets with this online service, it wasn’t an issue and [...]

By: API for TunkRank Scores | The Noisy Channel

API for TunkRank Scores | The Noisy Channel — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 03:35:28 +0000

[...] lot of other users generally participate in a culture of reciprocity (or, to put it less gently, an attention Ponzi scheme) that leads to their obtaining followers who themselves follow a lot of other users. A user’s [...]

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 22:35:47 +0000

Ethan, great to see you over here at The Noisy Channel!

I think the problem is that while social media offers rich possibilities of filtering in theory, it has under-delivered in practice. But the problem is as much cultural as technical. For all of the rhetoric about “joining the conversation”, much of the social media activity has been competitive monologue. Or worse, a rat race to score more status points.

What we need to get out of this mess is for people to optimize for meaningful objectives. As long as people are are caught up in trying to accumulate virtual notches in their virtual belts, social media won’t be–and don’t deserve to be–taken seriously.

By: Ethan McCarty

Ethan McCarty — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:03:25 +0000

[reposted form a comment on the Greater IBM blog] Yeah, sometimes it does seem like social media creates and echo chamber that distorts reality. And in that way it’s no different, really, than traditional media. The shame of it is that I think we were all hoping social media would provide a really effective filter and help us find what’s important immediately by automagically separating the wheat from the chaff. And to some extent, it’s effective — for example, bringing together Jasmin and Debbe and others in the Greater IBM. Yet the onus is still ultimately on the individual to do some of the filtering and it’s sometimes hard to gauge what’s important from what’s just loud.

By: The Influence Economy | The Noisy Channel

The Influence Economy | The Noisy Channel — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:26:44 +0000

[...] in recent days. On one hand, there’s been a lot of attention to the problem of measuring Twitter authority / influence. On the other hand, there have been efforts, some more serious than others, to monetize the [...]

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:08:15 +0000

Barb, thank you for reminding me that rational people still value reality over pseudo-status. As I hope I’m getting across, I’m a huge fan of Twitter–an idealist, as Curt Monash so aptly put it. In fact, I hope my recent post about measuring influence on Twitter helps emphasize reality, rather than simply increasing the noise that often passes for marketing on Twitter.

http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/01/13/a-twitter-analog-to-pagerank/

By: Barb Chamberlain

Barb Chamberlain — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:57:16 +0000

Daniel,

Thanks for the very thought-provoking post.

I’m like Erica: dipping my toes in the stream, knowing that the people I’ve chosen to follow should be sending something interesting, informative, funny, or insightful my way whenever I have time to look. I didn’t follow any of them expecting to be followed back.

I’d never follow thousands. I assume that’s a side effect of the auto-follow function.

I choose those I follow and I send them an @ message to tell them why. When someone follows me, I look at the profile and decide whether to follow back. I’m not on Twitter to market myself or my services so the volume isn’t big enough to force a less personal approach.

I don’t limit the number of people I connect with professionally in real life or on LinkedIn, nor do I talk with each one of them every day. My work (communications, PR, community relations) brings me in contact with a really big circle and I would never artificially limit that.

If these connections all get on Twitter, I’ll probably follow them. But if they want to make sure we’re communicating and they have my attention, they’d better pick up the phone, DM or @ me, or email me.

@BarbChamberlain

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 06:02:02 +0000

A fair point, though I think we’re really just quibbling over thresholds. If you were following thousands of people, I would suspect that you hadn’t even had the opportunity to determine that you found them interesting. Learning enough about someone to decide that you find them interesting is itself an investment of attention. Perhaps the expected ongoing investment per interesting person is low, but I also suspect it’s not zero.

By: Erica Naone

Erica Naone — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:15:30 +0000

One other possible way to look at it: I don’t read all the posts of all the people I follow on the microblogging service I use (not Twitter — a smaller one). Instead, I enjoy dipping my toes in from time to time, trusting that there will be something interesting on my main personal page. So, I don’t worry about how many people I follow. I just follow people who put up things I find interesting. In other words, I do pay attention to the people I follow, but not at every moment. Granted, I only follow about 60 people myself, but I think I’d treat it the same way no matter what the number was. And 60 would be very overwhelming already, were I trying to be sure to interact with all of them. I think of microblogging as a slower, more laid back sort of chat room. I show up, see who’s hanging out, and interact if I have something to say. Anyone I follow is someone I’m glad to see at the hangout, but not necessarily someone I want to know about at every moment. I imagine this would be one way to handle following a huge amount of people — point being, I don’t think that following lots of people is necessarily dishonest or self-serving.

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:55:51 +0000

I don’t fault anyone for trying to promote themselves. I just cringe when people invest in building an audience that isn’t actually watching the show.

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 05:19:26 +0000

I fully support your 200 Twitter cap movement. I’ve always thought that the people who rave about using Twitter as a way to “build and market their personal brand” or to “build an audience” had already achieved a critical mass of fame and were just looking for more ways to snowball bigger.

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:07:20 +0000

Roy, I like your approach. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by my experience with Twitter, which is why I am so eager to see it live up to its potential rather than devolve into spam and status competition.

By the way, Curt Monash wrote an interesting critique of some of my recent posts about Twitter, including this one. Check it out:

http://www.texttechnologies.com/2009/01/02/daniel-tunkelang-idealizes-twitter/

By: Roy Scribner

Roy Scribner — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 01:56:27 +0000

Twitter is an interesting dynamic. Without question, it has been the first SM-type application that has connected me to other bloggers, in a relevant, relationship-building, way. I look at my Twitter network like spherical rings. The first ring is half a dozen other bloggers that I have the closest relationship with, the next ring is 20 to 30 people that I interact with, and the 3rd layer is everyone else. I’ve only been on Twitter since October, so the challenge now is to move people closer – not to add additional followers.

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 01:01:32 +0000

It is ironic that the social norm of reciprocity is ultimately undermining the social aspect of social networks. Following people to be polite and then hiding them to avoid paying attention to them–that’s silly enough, but it’s even sillier when the whole reason people are following each other in the first place is to rack up followers.

By: Ranjit Mathoda

Ranjit Mathoda — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:27:10 +0000

Thanks, that was like a missing jigsaw piece falling into place on my feelings about twitter. Interesting that friendfeed has the same basic issue, but has used groupings and hiding to cope.