DISQUS

I was contacted by a lawyer in regards to a complaint I made about Reunion on a pretty well known blog. Email stated that they were investigating reunion.com and wanted to learn more about my experience.

Nick, I am far from an expert, nor do I play one on TV or on the Internet. I appreciate the note, but at the same time am really not even sure what "social media" even is. To me all media is social because it requires communication. Communication is best done with another person, those who communicate with themselves are considered "crazy".

I am not sure I can live up to your label.

What happens if those 50 were the power users that follow you, and now you are just left with spam, self promoters and other people that really don't utilize the true power? Twitter whores if you will. We have all seen them, they follow 2000 people but generally no one follows them. Is it then a viable solution/choice? Eventually that is what it will come down to. As more and more people start use the system as a forced life stream instead of a casual life stream, more and more noise will result.

There are some really scary things coming out of the local tracker I have running. One post being submitted by 5 different usernames (for example). The great thing about it is I do have the choice to un-follow, and I don't. In the end, the people that provide viable content will last and retain followers, however the public stream will become as polluted as the Potomac.

I Personally believe the auto blog post feature (along with some other auto features) should be disabled, Twitter is more powerful as a referral system, not as powerful as a self referral system. There are some people that I enjoy following that use this feature, however it is wearing thin and soon I will choose just to un-follow and direct my attention in other areas.

In the long term it does more harm that good. It adds more and more noise to the once powerful signal. Sure if you are in it for the moment, perhaps it is something to utilize. If you are trying to establish a large base that follows you wherever you go (ala Ze Frank, Merlin Mann, Garyvee and others) then I would advise against it.

In order to have a network you need to have people. There are people using AIM, but instead of concentrating on them they have concentrated on advertising to them. This has neglected the true needs of the individual using the service. This is how things like AIM pages slip through the cracks.

I use the AIM service, but I don't use AIM client. If we take out all the people that are in that scenario, how many true users do they have?

I really like this idea. I do have one question though. Let's say the person giving the pitch has an idea that is good, but not solid. Someone in the crowd expands on the idea and makes it their own? Just a risk you take?

Hopefully if we ever get it out, the latest product we are working on will do just this. We are modifying the technology behind politweets and twittertale so you can pick what you want to track.

So who purchased Bebo for the rumored 1 billion dollars?

It is OK not to like twitter, it really isn't for everyone. I don't spend much time on it and use it more as a mechanism to get an opinion poll or to let friends know where I am. Twitter to me is a global concierge system.