Twitter Attempts. Fail.

The elusive fail whale wore its big, ugly self... on me. I tried out a blog contest. I tried to offer valuable content to followers and prospect re-tweeters by perusing Google “social media” News for hours… and I got nothing.

Are you doing things wrong?
A recent article by Jenny Cromie revealed to me a number of things I’ve been doing wrong on Twitter. Are you in the same boat? I won’t steal Jenny’s thunder by going through every example she politely conveyed with hysterical lingo. I will, however, offer you some things to consider:

The best kinds of Tweeple
They are natural. They are not awkward and are certainly not desperate. We who boast less than 300 followers tend to get nervous after a couple minutes of no response because we see other handles with numerous @replies. Are we not popular? Truth hurts—yes. Take it very personal and rethink your strategy.

How to Tweet
Be natural. Find things when they occur up-to-the-minute (because Twitter is all about up-to-the-minute) and tweet about them if you think “your” followers might find it appealing. Some people are better tweeters than others because they know the landscape much better than you do. (Don’t for one second take that personal). If I were a natural at the Internet space, I would know better. I’m not, but I'm learning.

Remember…
Twitter is a communication tool, a very fast one. Choose your Tweets wisely and when you do have the time, tweet. When you don’t, don’t. It’s just that simple.

Have you made mistakes? Tell us about them. Funny, strange, mistakes that turned into something good, etc.

The Fall of Twitter?

MySpace was fun, then the spam came.

Facebook was great, then the spam came.

Twitter is great, and now the spam is here.

In order for a community to flourish it must have members. With members comes momentum and with momentum come the stupid people. This is the tricky part about preventing spam in a user-generated content community; there is no way to keep out the trouble makers without limiting the community's potential for everyone. Charge for the service and some people are left out (I would have to reconsider using Facebook if they charged). Before you knew what Twitter was or how it worked, would you have paid to use it? I did not understand Twitter at first until I used it a while then realized the value. On top of everything else, even if a community charged its users, this still would not guarantee the safety of a spam-free environment.

I do not think there is an easy fix for spam on social networks. We should probably get used to a certain degree of it. While spammers will get smarter and smarter, the only defenses we have are better anti-spam education, better spam filters on the communities, and harsh punishment when possible. I personally think that Twitter has done a good job so far to let people know about DM spam. Hopefully the developers have taken a few lessons from MySpace and the others that have lost control of the problem.

An Epic Fail Whale

While watching the presidential debate on Friday, I was also following along with the conversation on Twitter. As expected, most people on Twitter were following the debate and giving their play-by-play commentary. With so many people on Twitter, I hoped Twitter would have beefed up their servers for the heavy amount of traffic they were going to receive during the debate. I knew better though. I predicted a 'fail whale' and it did indeed happen:




The 'fail whale' came out during the debate. While it wasn't long lasted, it was still an epic fail. Imagine if you were watching the Super Bowl and your TV reception kept going in and out, you wouldn't stay with that cable company much longer would you? Twitter needs a business model, a revenue stream, and more reliable servers.



The VP debate is this Thursday. Let's hope Twitter can handle it. I wouldn't bet on it though.

Ihateyourcompany.com

Very interesting article from the WSJ on how companies are handling user feedback online.

What should companies do?
Get involved in the conversation. Approach the consumer in an understanding, not angry, tone. You won't be able to buy up every negative domain or stop every comment, so the best thing you can do is be transparent. Approach the customer with open arms and see what you can do to help them.

Companies shouldn't fear the negative comment. They should embrace it. If people are worked up enough about your product to write negatively about it online, chances are they will be listening to you explain how you will right a wrong.

Twitter + UK = bloody fail

Twitter users in the UK are not too happy today. Twitter is momentarily ending outbound SMS messaging to users in the UK. The service has become very popular in the UK, which is great for Twitter, but that also means higher costs.

The Twitter blog says “it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US.”

It is understandable that Twitter can't afford to foot that type of bill per user, but Twitter still needs a business model to work off of. Whether it is ads or a subscription service, they need to generate some form of steady income.

Whatever they do, I'm sure it will upset some of its users. But it is better to upset a few than to have to put up a permanent 'fail whale.'

No 'Fail Whale' for Twitter

I have been a member of Twitter for at least a year now...but it wasn't until recently that I became a Twitter-phile. I use twitter daily and post and receive updates from the people I follow. Part of my obsession has come from the application Twinkle, which lets me see what people are saying in my area, regardless of whether or not I am Following them on Twitter.

This article summarizes and captures what makes Twitter unique and why it is successful.

Oh, by the way, you can follow me on twitter here: @AxiomPR