Know Who Follows You

The standard e-mail from Twitter if a new user starts to follow you doesn’t contain a whole lot of information about this new follower. As following is about connecting people it doesn’t hurt to know more about this new follower. (S)he could be useful to your network or tweet to much to follow. You might have the same interests or background. The standard e-mail only shows a name and username and a link to their profile;

So if you want to know more about this new follower you have to check out the profile first through the direct link to the user profile and then decide to follow back, block or do nothing. Last week I heard about a service – Twimailer – which sends you a more detailed e-mail with more information about the new follower. I didn’t know at first how to implement this e-mail address from them as Twitter didn’t accept it and if they would be down then I wouldn’t get any e-mail at all. Luckily I found a hack to use this new service. Basically I can forward any e-mail from Twitter through my gmail account and thus receive e-mails like this one about the same follower;

Now I can see the number of followers, the number of friends and the ten latest tweets. Further down is a link where I can click to follow this user back. I also can see their location, a link to their homepage (if it’s provided) and a short bio. Basically this saves the step to go to Twitter and view this user profile, not bad at all. Additional there’s another service which let’s you manage your followers; Tweetsum. This service helps you decide whether to follow someone back or not and let’s you drag users from one column to another to order them or unfollow them. They also rate all users with a DBI, this “DBI (affectionally called the Douche Bag Index) is a number that rates your followers according to how they use Twitter. DBI ranges from 0 to 100 and higher numbers represent people who are more likely to be annoying twitter users.” Currently my DBI (for @artgrrl) is 1.58. When you click on the information icon you get the basic information similar to the screen shot above. I like this easy drag and drop feature to order followers and fans, although I can also drag users from the ‘new’ list to ‘meh’ while I wasn’t following them.

Searching on Twitter

Two weeks ago I saw a tweet from @twitter about random users who got a search box on their homepage and I wanted to be one of them, although I was away for a few days and had a minimum of tweets last week.

If you are one of the random few who has a search box on twitter.com/home, let us know what you think. Write @twitter — include #topsearch 1:33 AM Feb 25th from web

I still don’t know what functions Twitter should implement themselves and how basic and simple it should stay. This question however is important for my thesis as I want to define Twitter. There are enough external applications now to extend the functionality of Twitter. Some basic functions like the search field are welcome as I use it a lot to see what’s happening on Twitter.

This morning I wanted to update my settings on Twitter as I wanted to try out Twimailer, a function that extends the e-mail notifications of new followers with their number of followers and the last ten tweets. However I couldn’t find the settings link or link to my profile and then I noticed the search field and trends button. Here you see what it looks like;

The search page does not look the same as the regular search page does, and the link to the regular search page is missing at the bottom of my homepage. The new search page has some extra features now. At the top right corner I find some matching users which I can click on and in the menu is the home button now. Below that there’s a featured user which gives me the feeling of Google adwords. Does this mean Twitter will implement advertisement soon? Below these there are the usual trending topics and nifty queries (which are always the same) I never bother to use but do look at;

What I would like instead of trends are keywords I can choose like coffee or haiku, instead of the words that are used the most on Twitter. In Firefox I get a list of the last searched for items, I don’t know if this is a functionality of Twitter or Firefox but I like it. I do want to keep this search box for a while. It’s better to have it within reach than scrolling to the bottom of every page. The trends do vary during the day though, so they must be updated live. This way I can see what’s happening on Twitter and use it more as a grassroots news site.

Who came First, Twitter or the Other Media?

Apparently Twitter was the first medium or perhaps the second after BNR newsradio with news about the plane crash at Schiphol. It started with a few single tweets by p2kkennemerland,  me, Laradio and nipp and perhaps other users too;

artgrrl RT @p2kkennemerland 10:31:33 PRIO 1 UGS A PELIKAANWEG LUCHTHAVEN SCHIPHOL LUCHTVAART INCIDENT SCHIPHOL (VOS: 6) (INC: 09) #schiphol 11:37 AM yesterday from web

Laradio Luisteraars melden ons dat er een vliegtuig is neergestort op Schiphol 10:37 AM yesterday from web

nipp Airplane crash @ Schiphol Airport Amsterdam!! 10:39 AM yesterday from web

There was also more news on Twitter than any other medium. I checked the websites of nu.nl and CNN but there was not much to find there right after the crash. And maybe it’s not even important what the messages were saying but there were so many of them. I checked TwitPic and it was down for a while, and now I read in the Dutch newspaper NRCnext that soon after there were a hundred tweets a minute about the crash. With this many messages it’s not easy to keep up or filter them. I did check the website Twitterfall with the keyword schiphol and it went too fast to read, just like with the American presidential elections last year and the inauguration of Obama. Also interesting is the huge amount of followers nipp gained yesterday just by tweeting about the crash. Are they just curious about the crash? Were they following nipp as if it was a newssite? What social impact do these media have here?

Follow and Connect

The cool thing about following people on Twitter is that they don’t have to acknowledge you, following is a one way function, though it’s nice if people follow you back. You can always block them too, so you will not appear in their overview but they can still see your page, if it’s not set to private. Following another user is something like bookmarking them (that’s what I do sometimes) or becoming their fan. On Flickr they have the same system where users can add another user as a contact. This contact can approve this request of friendship or not.

On a lot of social network sites a friend has to be approved and this only works if both users add each other. This also means that one of the two can break up and the other one loses a contact in his or her list. On Twitter a user is constanly aware of their friends as their tweets appear in the general overview. This same concept goes for friends on Hyves and Facebook where there’s a feed of friend activity although here a user can decide to read less or more about certain friends or groups. I do wonder why on one site a friend has to be approved and on another site this is not the case. Does this has anything to do with privacy or more personal content?

Another thing that gets more important on Twitter is the number of friends or followers a user has, especially since the launch of overviews like the Dutch Twittergids.nl (where my account @twesis is 1^st on the wordpress list, 2^nd on the blogger list and student list and 17^th on the top100 list). For some people this number represents a grade or level of popularity. This number has a high importance in the book ‘Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom’ by Cory Doctorow.[1] In this novel Doctorow introduces ‘the notion of “Whuffie,” a kind of measure of social capital. People check out (“ping”) one another’s Whuffie when they meet, and that gives them some notion of how much respect and credibility the other has’.[2] Meaning on social network sites and Twitter this is already a reality when the number of followers or friends could give a user a higher credibility.

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[1] <http://craphound.com/down/>

[2] <http://dylan.tweney.com/2003/01/13/down-and-out/>

Coffee and Dating on Twitter

Not only a Twestival is a great way to meet new tweeple, also tweeting with followers of followers can help to make new connections. I tweet a lot about coffee and had a twitfight last year with a friend about coffee and senseo. I also searched on Twitter for keywords like Nespresso and found the following tweet from @moriesbel;

mm, die Variations van Nespresso zijn echt goed. Geen cheap smaakje, maar echt puur, subliem! Geconfijte gember, mandarijn of caramel. :P :P 4:19 PM Dec 5th, 2008 from web

I replied that I though it’s not done, drinking coffee that came out of a cup, it reminded me of melted cheese in a cup. Then Maurice replied that he thought so too at first but this coffee was really good and he asked me to come and try. Then we tweeted some more about coffee and haiku’s in Dutch and English. It feels a bit weird that we tried to plan a meeting through tweets as all our followers could read them, and lurkers too. But on 10:40 AM Jan 9th Maurice wrote that he would sent his phone number and address through a direct message (one that only I can read). Already on the way I tweeted about the meeting;

about to leave for an IRL Twitter meet & greet for 2 with @moriesbel (yes, we only met on Twitter) 11:27 AM Jan 11th from web

On the actual meeting itself we pokened and drank coffee and tweeted about it, it was a real tweet-up. We also tried the mandarin coffee Maurice tweeted about a month earlier. Then we forgot about the croissants, “we were so busy that we burnt the croissants that @artgrrl brought with her. so then we took the ‘kaiser brötchen’ rolls (a german name that is) and treated ourselves on (or is it ‘to’?) hazelnut spread (Nutella’s), which was mmm”. I also fell in love with his Latte mento, a machine that makes milk foam for a perfect cappuccino, a few days later I bought one online and so did another friend of mine. We also discussed the kitchen and later I got a reply on Twitter with a link to pictures that the kitchen had been modified. On this tweet-up we had discussions about social aspects on Twitter and escaping the limitations of Twitter like customizing your background to add more information, very inspiring like Maurice tweeted;

Twoffeessants-meet with @artgrrl was not only gezellig, but really inspiring and productive as well. 5:05 PM Jan 11th from TwitterFon

On our next tweet-up we had coffee and croissants again and discussions about lurking on Twitter and if this is ok or not. When are people just following, when is it lurking and when is it annoying? Is lurking just reading without ever writing a comment or reply, but then what about readers of a blog? Is the purpose of a (micro)blog writing to be read or to receive comments too? We definitely need new descriptions for words like microblogging and lurking, in my opinion a blog cannot be compared with a newspaper because the function to reply is hard to ignore and easy to use. But a reader is not required to reply.

Amsterdam Twestival 2009

Yesterday I had a great evening at the Amsterdam Holland Twestival 2009, meeting tweeple in real life, meeting new tweeple and party. The Twestival was being organised in 175+ cities across the world, all partying for a purpose for charity:water. The event was entirely organised by volunteers and a huge succes with over 200 visitors, probably much more. A lot of vistors were using their iPhones or Blackberry’s and twittering in public, making pictures which can be found on Mobypicture and Flickr. I tried to make some pics with my EEEpc but that only works with some light around.

One day later it’s interesting to find some messages and new followers on my Twitter accounts from tweeps I talked to in real life last night. I could use some more meetings like these. Let’s see what happens between the people who met last night and the new contacts.

How Annoying is Following?

Today I decided to try an experiment on following and followers and their behavior. I found a tip on the blog of @TheBusyBrain. He suggests to follow all his followers and see how many of them follow in return. To do this experiment I didn’t want to add hundreds of followers to my basic account @artgrrlas I would have to read thousands of tweets all day long, I need my tweetfree moments too! On my new experimental account @twesisI did not just click on the followers of @TheBusyTrain but also on followers of followers and people I follow through my frst account. Anyway, after about 800 followers I stopped and before lunch I already had more than 120 users following me back and almost 40 direct messages and @replies in which some thanked me for following them. Some of these direct messages are automatically created by SocialToo. I should automatically follow anyone who follows me now, but I still have to click users by hand, oh well. As I write this I have about 200 followers and 60 direct messages.

Following and making friends on Twitter is quite different than on other social network sites I think. On Hyves and Facebook I have only a handful of friends I’ve never met in person. Then again I don’t share much personal information on Twitter either. On my first account I do not follow everbody in return though (sorry, I have to be honest here). In this experiment I have to wait for 24 hours and see how many followers I have by then. I think I also follow most people of the Amsterdam Poken meetup now, see what happens there. To follow and to be followed is still fascinating to me, I want to understand it and therefore I have to do it. It’s all part my the participatory research. I wonder if people think it’s annoying that strangers follow them, or do they collect them no matter who they are? Why do people follow in the first place?