-
Website
http://www.scobleizer.com/ -
Original page
http://scobleizer.com/2009/10/31/twitters-lists-make-chris-brogan-feel-bad/ -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
All Comments
I met Chris over the whole "Twitter Packs" idea - which I said was exclusionary and contrary to the public spirit of Twitter back in what? 2007? It was his idea and I understood where it came from and how it was intended to be helpful. But I also sow how it could damage the community.
Now I'm on the same side of the table as Chris - and the opposite of yours.
Lists *could* be great - if everyone approached them from the viewpoint you do. But they won't Robert. They'll be misused, abused, and a whole new source of twitter gaming. Where people used to try and amass follower numbers to convince others they had reach and influence, they will soon game list numbers.
How long before accounts are created that solely "list" a series of users names under tags like "social media" "social media guru" "thoughtleader" etc so that the number that says "lists" under their name is high?
How long before we start getting the obnoxious "get on 300 lists today by joining insertshortlinkhere.com!!" spam?
Following someone is NOT just a form of lists. It means that I actually have them in my twitterstream. You aren't ever forced to view a list again once you've made it. You can simply list dozens of names and never go back to that particular view, but just stay in your own private view. I can see your lists without ever having to follow someone. Not in the mood to read their crap on a given day? Just don't look at that list. Following is a level of commitment for me.
As it is? I'm not on a single one of your lists. And if I'm being utterly truthful? Yeah, it stung just a little bit that I'm worth talking to in person, but didn't make any of your "more complete" lists. It actually prompted this tweet http://twitter.com/GeekMommy/status/5332041425 before I found out you had written this post.
If anything, I'm finding that lists are one of those shiny objects that get coders in trouble so often... they do something based on "can we do X?" rather than "should we do X?"
I don't think you are acknowledging the downside of lists. While they have the ability to be something awesome the way that you are trying to use them? They are also have the ability to be horribly misused and to hurt people. And honestly? I don't really want to hurt people I like. Do you?
That said, you're on my favorite geek mommy list and you are on my most important list: the list of people I follow. I read that first before I read any of my lists. Oh, and I'm not done building lists yet. I'm only about 10% done going through my 12,000 followings.
You know, before I got rid of them yesterday, you were the first person I added to my "People Who Make Me Think" list. You're still top of that list, even if it's not a formal "list" on Twitter any more.
I may not always agree with your conclusions but I do always find that you make me examine my own perspective and analysis and that more often than not, you add to my awareness.
I'm very honored to be on your follow list Robert, but I'm even more fortunate to follow you. You're the one who originally made me see the power of twitter and who you follow being more important than who follows you. I've learned a lot thanks to you the past couple of years.
Thanks Robert!
Even so, we don't give the same attention to everyone in our streams. We all have favorites, people we'll go back for, and people who when we see them in our stream we pay attention. @hotdogsladies said at SXSW that people pay you with their attention if nothing else as a way to tell people not to rush to monetize their blogs or Twitter streams. I still stick to that. I know that some people who follow me barely notice, but others are very engaged.
The rush to measure all this stuff is short-sighted. Those things are helpful, but they don't do a good job of gauging influence.
1) Twitter List were made for the sole benefit of each account holder (e.g., make the twitter stream easier to sort/manage) then they wouldn't be listed and distributed publicly. (this is what should have happened and was overdue)
2) Twitter list were made to be exclusionary then they would be openly traded and listed on each account.
One thing is for sure... the new "list" feature will make the rich "richer" and the poor "poorer", it clearly expands the reach of the upper class Twitter user while devaluing the "influence" of the average twitter user.
(It also looks silly when one of those upper users takes shots at another, you can have a different opinion with out coming across as a jerk)
(1) You can make them private. Concerned about the 'popularity' thing? Just hide the list.
(2) You can list an account you don't actually follow with your main feed. This means you can chop out company news and other items that you may only want to check once a day. By doing so, they won't clutter up your main feed.
To be devious, you could use private lists of people you don't actually follow for corporate intelligence gathering. Pretty useful if that's what you do.
Lists are a tool - a tool with some customization that make them more useful to some people.
You're coming from the viewpoint of the 0.00001% of the internet world that has an audience, so your perspective is very skewed. Of course twitter wants to cater to this because this gets them talked about, but catering to you doesn't help, oh, about 100% of everyone else, give or take a bit.
Note, I'm not actually on twitter, I looked at it a bit and realized that for about half of everyone I know on it, it's a 2000s version of the old finger client, and for the other half it's the equivalent of World of Warcraft guild chat, except outside of the game. In other words, a time sink I don't have the time for.
Here's a question for you: What about a corporate twitter account making a list? Would that constitute an endorsement by the sponsoring corporation? Would they understand that?
Cheers Robert.
Here's another. What if people start coming out with "shit lists" that you can't control. So, anyone that tweets mean things to me goes on a public shit list. You can easily see something like that being reciprocal and getting out of control.
I have huge respect for both Chris and Robert and this is just a difference of opinion not a personal attack. The two of them see things differently and express things differently. I highly doubt this would dent the respect Chris has for Robert or even offend him since one of the qualities he admires - and has even written about - is Robert's honesty. Fans of Chris will understand this and not feel the need to lay into someone he respects, I'm sure. Personally, I think it's healthy for two intelligent and experienced people to express differing opinions because it opens up the conversation. People can disagree and even throw a few currant buns at each other and still respect each other. It's not a soap opera.
There's been a great debate about all aspects of this on Twitter today sparked off by these different views and I can see validity in both of them so it's a shame to view it as a 'pissing contest' because - well - it's just not. It's probably more healthy to get onto twitter, build some lists of your own, have a few thoughts about the possible social ramifications and then blog about it. The more voices that are out there expressing opinions the better. The Bluebird of Guilt is just an annoying budgie at this point. The secret is out. Everyone knows about Twitter Lists, so why don't we all engage in discussing how they are changing things and how we can use that?
In terms of Robert's list-building, I was also involved in the first BETA testing group and it was a blank sheet. While the majority of us were rushing around trying to work out the best ways to use the new tools and set up the theme park before the customers arrived, Robert was totally focused. He knew exactly how he wanted to use Lists and put way more work into this than anyone else I observed in the original team. I think that earns him the right to express an opinion.
From my perspective, I don't consider myself an expert on lists. I seem to come at them from a different perspective to most. My focus was to make lists that people would find useful because I was aware that we were setting everything up. My view hasn't changed now everyone's arrived. For that reason, I don't get bugged at all for being 'excluded' from lists because that wasn't my consideration in the first place. It's always nice to be listed but I'm more bothered by lists of mine that nobody is interested in following. These tend to be the lists I haven't finished building yet so the content needs work. Sometimes I delete the unpopular ones but some of them make sense to me anyhow so they stay. For instance, I have one list that nobody follows but I add my favourite tweeter to it every day. To me, this is growing into a great list so I don't care how others feel about it because in a month or so they'll cotton on to how fab it is. Also, often the people I add to this list as my 'tweeter de jour' are really happy to be a featured person on that day and that matters enough that I couldn't care less how many people follow it.
Anyway, I'm rambling now so I'll round up my points. In summary: Chris=good , Robert=good , open discussion=good . It's all good. That's just about all I have to say about that. If you want to disagree, find me on twitter. Don't throw currant buns though: I'm allergic to currants.
List Robert. List Chris. Enjoy lists. :)
Rebecca
Yep. I was curious what lists I was being included on... this lovely troll account popped up. Blocking it solved my issue - but this will become more and more common shortly.
Fun having to track that sort of thing down all the time, eh?
Would be particularly fun if that showed up on your Google search (not.)
"Your list is incomplete. My account has 2400+ listings and should be on this list. I never have been on the Suggested User List, by the way, unlike most of these."
It's just a list. Was he hurt that he wasn't included? Look at how many times HIS account is listed (he bothers to tell us). Was Mr Scobles' "Feely" in need of a little "Touchy"?
Not everyone wins. Not everyone is good at or likes or is involved in everything. I respect both you and Chris, but there's people who are good at stuff, and those who are not. There are people who can cook, and those who cannot. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, with different skill levels and experiences, and we should respect and honor that.
At some point, as this stuff becomes more and more mainstream, we're going to have to realize it's impossible to include everyone in everything.
Its actually completely the opposite. Its as simple as giving tweeters a more effective way to share and find other people with whom they have a common interest. Its word of mouth about your network. "Hey everyone, these are some people that you might want to check out. I've made it easy for you to find them."
End of story.
One of the best ways to understand people's social media content/activity is to understand how it is defined by others. Though clearly this can lead to erroneous results, its otherwise an awesome style of "filtering" information on a platform like Twitter. This is great for discovery. Its pretty damn deep actually, I think people will continue to understand more of the useful applications in due time. This is what Eric Schmidt is looking for when trying to determine page rank for social media, beyond simple follower counts.
http://tweetphoto.com/gtbaebtn
All in fun
I realize that you are primarily creating reference lists of "movers and shakers". But Twitter is a social network and a lot of the lists are not that at all. They are lists of "favorite people" or "fun people".
Not everyone sees their followers as "people who provide value to their personal brand". For a lot of people it's just about interacting with other people.
Looked at from that perspective, lists that miss out people are likely to cause some bad feelings.
Alan @you2gov
At first, Twitter was just a curiosity, then by following folks that I discovered thru TED, authors@google and so on a whole new world opened up. I'm learning an incredible amount, attending seminars and conferences the world over and staying interested.
Lists are one way to answer the 'filters issue' and Chris sez so, but I think I get what he means by exclusionary and it's that it's lists of people.
People are fuzzier than lists allow and it seems to me that each curator of a list has different sensitivities about others' resources, capabilities, groupings, etc.
So what Lists allow is each of us to pick our own curators of those things that interest us. This is new, but .... it's like picking your favorite DJ who keeps track of the music you like.
Maybe there's some way to share Tag Clouds...
Lists are a particular, peculiar kind of information, and when used honestly will be able to confirm or enhance what you've said about yourself to the world with information about how the world sees you. This isn't just information for yourself (although those of us who are more narcissistic than most can get a kick out of checking the lists we've made it onto) but information for others viewing your profile or Twitter stream. One thing that can happen if a new potential follower clicks over to your stream is that you might be having an off-day, or an off-hour, or a very specifically-targeted set of exchanges with someone over Twitter and your entire stream available on the front page is an even less representative sample of what you Tweet than such a small glimpse usually is. Also having lists available allows potential followers to get a sense of what other people think you do to add value to a conversation when it isn't obvious from your front page that day.
What I'd like to see, though, is a very low limit to how many lists you can have active at once. Three lists per user would force people to do some real thinking about what it is they want to promote and who they want to select for that promotion. It would be a scarce commodity worth care and attention instead of a trash can to dump stray thoughts.
This would be even more exclusionary, and Brogan would probably feel REALLY bad about it, but there is no information without discrimination: seeing a tree requires being able to tell where the tree stops and the sky begins, to be able to eliminate all non-tree things from the input. Without that discernment you have not seen a tree; you have experienced a nonsensical jumble of visual impressions. If Twitter is to be informative at all we have to be able to develop and use tools for processing bare data and achieving information. Lists are just such a tool.
I'm not worried about abuse or misuse of Lists any more than I am about rain on my windshield: windshields are there to allow drivers to keep their eyes open comfortably even at speeds so that they can see the road and process that info; rain occluding the windshield is a problem for the project of seeing the road, but that doesn't mean we get rid of windshields. We invent wipers. And certainly the possibility of rain shouldn't derail the windshield program while it's in its infancy.
All that being said, I probably won't make any lists. I don't like to make people feel bad.
Twitter may be fine for unemployed or social media expert, but if you bringing home the beacon with real work (I'm SAP Technology Consultant), you simply don't have the time (and passion) to pay attention to this redundancy (or you do a crappy job...).
I liked your former articles (in-depth analysis style), but now you gave it up for the 140-char circus, and here now is your new playground for nagging and grousing?
Feel free to do so, but without me. I unsubscribed from your RSS.
I don't find the lists helpful OR useful :(
"Your list is incomplete. My account has 2400+ listings and should be on this list. I never have been on the Suggested User List, by the way, unlike most of these."
Sucks being left off a list, doesn't it? Life's not fair, right?
"I can’t STAND this attitude that everyone should be included in everything."
Yeah, me neither...
http://www.bivingsreport.com/
So while in theory I agree with you that people shouldn't be upset by being left off lists, Robert, in reality I'm using lists in a way that's less likely to cause hurt feelings. I guess that means I've got one foot in both camps. :)
BTW - I think you might make my 'ppl to learn from list'
P.S. I'm glad I found your blog. I'm an SJSU alumna so it's good to see successful grads. When I was in Professor Buchwitz's class, I attended the talk you gave.
I am taking a wait and see attitude about the lists, mainly because I don't quite know what they are yet. So far, I don;t think they are evil or anything. Time will form my opinion, as will understanding.
mk
Thanks for your post. It was great
:)))