Comments on: The Twitter Noise Factor

By: PJ

PJ — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:57:42 +0000

Irony: The same people putting out noisy and boring tweets are the same people retweeting this blog.

EPICFAILOFTHENIGHT!

By: Harry Seldon

Harry Seldon — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:41:19 +0000

Yep, Twitter needs more filtering tools. They know it. Seesmic / Tweetdeck know it. So it is just a matter of months before it improves.

Indeed, since I wrote that article about what was lacking in Twitter, there have already been many changes, especially in the Twitter clients.

http://harryseldon.thinkosphere.com/2009/06/14/why-i-love-twitter-and-sometimes-hate-it-too

By: Gregg Masters

Gregg Masters — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:52:33 +0000

A definite add of spammers and affiliate market-eers now in the mix. Though the value and power of Twitter is that it is self vetting….and will (over time) screen out the ‘hit and run’ opportunity seeker crowd.

Twitter is about sustainable relevance, not message control or broadcast mindshare. To remain visible ‘in the cloud’ will require a continuous vote of ‘engagement confidence’ that you contribute value to the community, not attempt to suck it out, imj.

Jerry Jampolsky once said, ‘love is letting go of fear’; the new age twitter equivalent mantra may be ‘…pass it on..’ without an agenda.

By: Trevor

Trevor — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:04:23 +0000

Anyone not able to receive a communication will soon not be part of a conversation. 99% of the tweets I get back from those I newly follow are so obviously not “received” by an actual person and the lack of real conversation doesn’t bode well for the future existence of Twitter, IMHO.

By: John Mark Troyer

John Mark Troyer — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:06:22 +0000

That hasn’t been my experience in my little corner of Twitter. I hang with a very set of IT professionals who like to talk about virtualization on Twitter. Recent developments like Lists have broadened our community and made it easier to find, but I haven’t noticed an influx of noise.

Note that I don’t autofollow – from your experience I’m afraid the days of autofollow may be over. It does remind me of the decline of Usenet.

By: Siliconcowboy

Siliconcowboy — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:52:50 +0000

Great article, I completely agree and I also agree with Ed that a large crowd of trenders from the MySpace demographic has suddenly landed here. Many of them are tech savvy in the sense that they know little tricks such as how to keep trending topics alive by spamming the site, etc. This only increases the noise but it does work for them. The new Retweet functionality helps to cut some of this down, but not much.

By: AspenSpin

AspenSpin — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:42:49 +0000

Interesting insites Frank. Recently, I’ve found the conversation on Twitter to be much less personal than I previously experienced. Its still a great way to connect—but fewer “2-way” conversations.

By: Ed Shahzade

Ed Shahzade — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:33:34 +0000

I’ve noticed quite a change
on Twitter.
Though we’ve had different waves of changes
over the years, there has been a dramatic increase
of low-grade small talk, spam, and abusive use of
the site, the past several months.

I have the vantage point of having been on Twitter
since the beginning, and of seeing many new
followers/day.

In my opinion, a bulk of the decline in quality
tweets is significantly due to the recent influx
from MySpace.
I had @KevinMarks dislike that observation recently,
but that’s just a matter of politics.

I give credit to TwitterHQ in the respect that they
have gone from 1 part timer,
to a team of 7 full time Trust & Safety staffers.

But their poor on-boarding and dependence on “It’s opt-in, just unfollow”, underestimate
the harm to the community at large.