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Twitter is for telling the world what you are doing (taking a shower) not for having conversations. They just don't work here.

June 21, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

mjc, Igor Poltavskiy, Mazen A Melibari and 39 other people liked this

Preach it brotha. And if you have a moment (or 20 minutes) have a look at the email I just sent you. - Jason Hargrove

49 more comments

Completely agree. Here is where we can debate the optimal water flow for the shower. - Kevin C. Tofel

That is the reason, I hid all twitter entries on friendfeed which doesnt have like/comments.. Dont want duplication.. - Jigar Mehta

I'm curios to see how Twitter is going to be introduced to twitter virgins at the Seattle Podamp meeting. And will FF be there? - Leif Hansen

Why on earth would you want to tell someone about taking a shower? That is so boring. The whole idea that someone else actually cares that you are taking a shower, or eating a bagel, or something like that, is really narcissistic. - Jonathan Sterling

I have seen people twittering "Writing tweet on twitter.com".. how funny is that! - Jigar Mehta

Twitter serves its purpose as a notifier. I agree that it is not a place for extended conversation. - Alex Williams

I'm going to go take a shower. Talk amongst yourselves. - Wade Dorrell

users will use a sytem as they wish, regardless of whether the system is well suited to those wishes - Kevin Johnson from fftogo

@Leif - I'm here on friendfeed at #podcampseattle :) - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

comments like taking a shower is why I quit twitter, when I first joined it was much more like its original purpose of micro-blogging, When I quit all I saw was status updates. It was simply a waste of time for me so I left - BCK

Testify, Deacon Bob! No threading, no conversation... - Bill Sodeman from fftogo

Twitter is for having conversations with someone you don't care of too much, but from whom you're expecting to be cared of a lot. FriendFeed is definitely for having conversations with someone you'd better care of. - Giovanni De Stefano

Impulsive expression, thinking out loud, breaking news... and Haiku - Majento

I completely disagree. Twitter is for all sorts of short conversations, as well as status updates. It's not suitable for in-depth dialogue, for sure, but the whole point is having a number of tools available, each suitable for certain tasks. If you expect a tool to do everything, you need to readjust your expectations. - Fleep Tuque

Fleep: it's great for VERY SHORT conversations. Anything that requires more than three loops just falls apart on Twitter unless you don't have any friends. - Robert Scoble

Limiting ourselves to someone else's intentions would make for a mundane world, lacking invention and creativity. You have to break it to make it. Or, in the words of Cartman, "Whatevuh, I do what I want." - califmom

FriendFeed has better conversation tech. The real question is, was this convo worth the bits it took up? - Mark Drapeau

The bottom line is that I use Twitter for (hopefully interesting) status updates and short convos, and idea bursts. I couldn't be bothered to have long convos online. - Mark Drapeau

Mark: why does everything have to be "worth" something? Sometimes I just like to talk about something that has no worth. Don't you? Or do you ask your family "what is this stupid conversation worth?" I bet that'd make you a lot of friends. :-) - Robert Scoble

I agree. Twitter is good for starting a conversation, to get the ball rolling if you will. Friendfeed is much better to continue and expand the conversation. - Pedro Fonseca

will we ever agree? I was just thinking last night how crazy it is the kinds of things I hav learned from so many ppl 140 at a time. Twitter is perfect for how I like to communicate - Lisa

Lisa: well, then you'll love FriendFeed. 140 characters at a time grouped into conversation clusters. - Robert Scoble

it is easier on friendfeed for sure...but i have more friends on twitter...so i continually check the replies tab if i am having a convo - Laura

@Scobleizer Im afraid i mite attract da "wrong" kinda Tweeps if I tweet that I'm takin a shower :( -- know whad I'm sayin' man? - Deborah Micek

I know it's fun to create rivalries where none actually exist, but c'mon, Twitter vs. FriendFeed? Who cares about that rivalry and why should we care? They both exist, they both will likely grow and anyone is free to use or not use. Whichever you prefer and what instances those preferences apply -- are matter of personal preference! :-) - Robert Seidman

so wrong, (and right) - kosmar

Robert: I see them as complementary, not rivals - Sally Church

Me too. Notice what is at top of this FF cluster: a tweet! Imagine that! - Robert Scoble

*sigh* Here we go again. Robert, there are some of us who don't have nice big phones to have nice, fat, conversations on FriendFeed. Some of us have rinky-dink phones with crappy browsers and FriendFeed is nigh on impossible to use, even using something like FFtogo. Read Steve Hodson's piece on the digital divide again. We aren't all privy to the same tools and some things just don't work. *I* have conversations on Twitter. It may be kludgy, but it's what's there. - Cyndy

Sally, me too: but Scoble sometimes likes stirring the pot even when there's not actually anything in it! - Robert Seidman

I'm wondering how many spare phone batteries he carries around with him! - Mr. Gunn

Admittedly, I find myself browsing FriendFeed (directly) and Twitter (via Hahlo3) on my iPhone whenever I'm standing around waiting for something. It's almost a default thing to do to keep myself occupied. - Akiva Moskovitz

sounds like it's time for a new phone. I agree with Scoble. - Ryan

robert seidman: bing, bing, bing - good answer, was wondering why creating a conflict between twitter & friendfeed was necessary - seems like a ruler exercise to me ;) - mike "glemak" dunn

re. iterating a comment : for me twitter is 1to1 or 1toMany IM/Notifications, while FF is Many (sources) to One "forum", that's the diff. and it seems that after all, we still need one place to follow it all, or we get lost with too many places. BTW FF has it problems too, look at this issue for example, so many diff threads on the same issue - Naor Mark

But Robert - I dont like the "grouped part" might as well just be commenting on a blog - nothing here looks different than comments on a techcrunch post. I like seeing what my friends say on their own pages, not in a grouped convo - Lisa

twitter is useful for pushed info. Robogames is a good example. I couldn't really hear the announcer, but they twittered info about the events while they happened. Maker faire did this as well, as did siggraph. I also dig the mars phoenix announcing water on mars on twitter first. Conversation, isn't really what it's meant for (nor is it meant for following 20k of people, why not just go to the everyone tab). - Doug Brooks

@Ryan Obviously I need to go dig up Steven's post. Aha! http://www.winextra.com/2008... There's a whole world out there of people like me and like Steven who can't just "go get a new phone" because we'd like a prettier one with better web browsing. - Cyndy

First, Scoble, nice example of how to enhance the use of Twitter...though sharing this on Friendfeed would have been more direct (so meta of you). Second, there are appropriate communications for Twitter...it's kinda of like a No Response Required zone that can paint a picture of the world without guilt of participation. - Marc Vermut from twhirl

Can we all agree that using twitter in the shower is one thing... posting the shower on Qik would be a whole different thing :-)! - Nancy Babyak

Twitter is a notification / text message style system - FF is a comment system. The synergy is great. I post on twitter and any thread that spawns lives on FF where it belongs. I don't really see the conflict. FF is parasitic by nature - that is it's strength,,, why fight it? - Soulhuntre

Additionally the "I'm taking a shower" twitters >ARE< the point for huge chunks of the twitterverse. Most of the folks who use it don;t care how many followers they have or use it as a way to get more investor interest. They use it to keep their close friends more easily up to date on the little things that make folks feel "present" to each other. Frankly I'd rather here some random... more... - Soulhuntre

"Here"? I'm reading this on FriendFeed. - Brent Logan

My earlier blog entry on "Stop being a twit on Twitter" comes to mind ;-) - http://www.bladam.com/main... - Adam Lasnik

I don't really think it's up to us to define what the proper use of Twitter is. The proper use is whatever is right for the individual user. If you and your followers enjoy telling each other you're taking a shower then that's great. If I'm not interested in your shower then I don't follow you. Twitter is a service, and however a person enjoys using it is fine. There is no right or wrong. - Kevin Shannon

I use twitter for convos all the time. One of the best ways for IMing on my phone is using Twitterberry. - Jacob Nahin

how about if not taking a shower? - Mark Forman

I have many conversations on Twitter - but I also don't try to interact with 21k people... then again, a conversation doesn't have to be longer than 1 statement a piece in my book. I like FF for concentrating large *group* conversations in one place - but I interact more with people on Twitter. To each her own tho. I won't tweet about showers. - Lucretia Pruitt

You can create networks on twitter if your cretive and use it for whatever you want. Obviously, watching the public timeline would suck, but your network could work anyway you want. - Bruce Prokopets

dissagree a little. You can have short conversations on Twitter, I think you can go back and forth three times. Its useful, you have to get straight to the point - Joe Mac Stevens

Robert Scoble

Twitter / juliehallboston: @Scobleizer we are not all ... - http://twitter.com/julieha...

May 10, 2008 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Mitchell Tsai, Nikpay, Elliott Ng and Andrew Dobrow liked this

I know that all PR people aren't evil. There are many good ones across the industry that I really like working for. But you gotta separate yourself from the people who just blindly send out press releases to email addresses without building relationships or trying to understand what that person wants to hear about, or how they want to hear it. I get tons of emails from PR types who are talking about stuff I'd never write about. That clutters my already cluttered email box and makes me bitchy because it makes the good ones harder to find and pay attention to. I have 823 emails in my inbox. Now, how many of those are from "good PR people?" See the problem? That's one reason Stowe Boyd wants to be pitched over on Twitter. That way it's in public, so people can help him filter the noise and also because we know that the good PR people are into building relationships with us, so will go where we want to hang out. - Robert Scoble

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"We" do seperate ourselves - "you" dont, at least not when you write blog posts and Twitter comments about "PR Flacks" - its like saying something about a whole race of people that is only true for some - you might KNOW that it doesn't apply to you, but it doesnt make you feel any better or less angry that its being said. - Lisa

This is where I agree with Robert totally. It's not the people, it's the noisy methods which aren't working. A PR person which goes out of their way to build up a personal relationship is the difference between a reply back and a "straight to trash bin" reaction. For the most part, it is the PR people who should be doing the filtering, as sending out subjects which are clearly non-interesting for certain people is a waste. - Andrew Dobrow

Lisa: on Twitter I only have 140 characters. Not a whole lot of space to get into nuance, but I did quickly explain that there was a difference between those that are clued in and those who aren't. Anyone who is on Twitter on a Saturday night is "clued in." - Robert Scoble

Lisa: and in my email box I can't tell the difference between a good PR person and a bad one. Please tell me how to do that. Is there a list somewhere that I should check? - Robert Scoble

Andrew, of course that is true, but the ones who need to hear this arent reading this, they arent on Twitter and clearly arent reading the blogs, so this bashing only hurts those who are trying, those who are developing the relationships, and trying to make it more of a conversation. We have to keep hearing it over and over - its like trying to dig out of a hole that someone keeps throwing dirt in. - Lisa

Lisa: good PR people will leave their pitches here: http://friendfeed.com/e... the rest will send me emails and leave me to decide whether or not they are evil or not. :-) - Robert Scoble

Lisa: Well hopefully causing a stir can somehow filter the word through to the non-personal PR reps, whether it be through connections, or through people understanding that the ones who are getting off their butts and hauling ass to create a personal relationship, are the ones whom, in the future, will be the most successful. - Andrew Dobrow

No, of course not, I have agreed that I think your job is hard too, I would hate having to hear about every cutting edge, revolutionary product in the world. I am just asking for some common courteousy to those of us that are doing our best not to offend and give us a break on the very medium that is supposed to be helping us to do a better job. when I am having fun talking on a... more... - Lisa

Lisa: if every PR message I received was actually about cutting edge and revolutionary products we wouldn't be having this conversation! Ahh, don't worry, be happy. - Robert Scoble

I swear I am done after this - but I just read this comment you left and thought OMG, this is EXACTLY the problem. Elliot Ng above said he was going to pitch you something but decided it wasnt spot on for your coverage area, and you actually encouraged him to pitch you anyway. you said: <<...anyway, who knows what my coverage area is? I'm always looking for new things...>> So, this is... more... - Lisa

Lisa well, keep in mind, if he really wanted to reach Louis and Corvida it isn't THAT FAR outside of my coverage area. I had dinner with Louis on Thursday night. The dude is interested in a lot of the same things I am. I have to think more about this. There are clearly some things I'm not interested in or have never written about that I get pitched on, generally I don't get irked by the noise except when it's pretty clear that they aren't even reading me and are just emailing cold off of some sort of list. - Robert Scoble

sorry I totally confused everyone. my stuff is also NOT in Corvida and Louis' coverage area either. My point is that companies need to be super laser focused. I need to find MY VERSION of Corvida. Well I did, he's Nitink of Software Abstraction. Then I need him to pitch me to Sramana Mitra who is probably the Louis Gray of my field. Then I don't know where it goes. This is a total PITA and time suck but the good news is that I learned a TON talking to Nitink and that means it was the right fit - Elliott Ng

I just hang out online with Corvida and Louis because I'm a social media addict! And they're cool. And my wife is going to kill me if I stay here in FFland. Gotta nest out to Twitterverse and then nest out to RL... - Elliott Ng

Robert Scoble

Oh, I have a LOT to say about this PR backlash: http://www.techmeme.com/080510... I won't, though.

May 10, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Christian Anderson, Mitchell Tsai, Lucretia Pruitt and 8 other people liked this

I won't because the bad PR people don't listen and the good ones just get pissed off by being dragged through the mud. I have to write a blog post on the new PR, though. What's that? You create interesting experiences for both journalists and bloggers. Sun Microsystems last week, by inviting Neil Young over, did just that. - Robert Scoble

22 more comments

Which you didn't go to. :-) - Louis Gray

The PR machine is unrelenting, but it's there job. Just like you have to fill a certain quota for FastCompany, PR peeps only have so much to work with to communicate to the public. So, it sure might seem like spam, and in some ways it might be pretty spammy, but the fact that so many people are trying to make an impression on you is exactly the argument you make about Twitter, and the following metric. Being a high-profile public figure is going to draw lots of PR. It's just a matter of common sense. - Andrew Dobrow

So write the blog post - you know that there are many people who would listen to you weighing in on this matter - just as many of them picked up on it when you twittered. Your words do hold weight where it matters - so get them out there before people start deciding what you *meant* to say. - Lucretia Pruitt

Louis: yes, but I was seriously tempted. I just had other things I needed to do that day and I can't do everything cool. - Robert Scoble

Like I said on Twitter Robert - yeah, we get it, you guys get too much email, a lot of the email you get is terrible, you dont want press releases, we knowwww. But you guys are major influencers, you write about a product or company and they get sales, so those companies want you to know about them. These people are CEOs and boot strapping entrepreneurs that dont have time to pitch... more... - Lisa

Though I'm sure there are PR guys that go way beyond their call of duty, to the point of abuse. And that is what I think Trapani's wiki is perfect for. But not for the PR trying to get their word in, because that's just their job. - Andrew Dobrow

I disagree. Being a high-profile person is going to draw a lot of ATTENTION but it won't draw PR if the people doing the PR know what they're doing and can find a hook that will speak to an audience. I don't care what Robert Scoble is doing UNLESS it relates to my life - business or personal - in some way that's truly relevant. Otherwise the releases and tweets and events and manufactured noise is just that, static I can do without. - Jeff Cutler

Andrew I've been in PR for 25 years. It's changed and I understand the email which in part I believe is fostered by emails in databases like Bacons, at least for journalists, and open emails without policies on blogs. So part of the issue is being clear about how to pitch a particular blogger. Now let's take the Twitpitch, that sounds great until the folks who don't understand twitter... more... - Albert Maruggi

Albert: That's the great thing about Twitter is that it's a total voluntary action to follow someone who is "spamming" or Twitpitching. I agree with Robert how e-mail PR can get a little rough sometimes, especially when you're such a high-regarded figure as Scoble, but that's just the price you have to pay I guess, since being well-regarded is not as voluntary as Twitter. - Andrew Dobrow

I'm weighing in as a journalist and a blogger (not the same thing) and I don't have an ax to grind with PR people, but I do expect them to follow certain rules. First, think like a reporter. If there's news there, then get the fact to me (or my editor) and we'll do the work we're paid to do. But don't take the two paths that infuriate most journalists...1. spoon-feeding us a slanted story that only serves you and your client. 2. treat us to a story that isn't news or anything that our readers care about. - Jeff Cutler

PR people are under a lot of pressure to show ROI for everything they do. Working for a public company, you still need to do the wire release and ensure your disclosure obligations are being met - there is no way around that for most market-moving announcements. With that said, that doesn't give PR people free license to spam the media and blogosphere. The pre-pitching and follow-up... more... - Rachel Polish

Shhh, don't tell any of those clueless PR people that I'm subscribing to everyone on this thread except for @Prokofy. - Robert Scoble

I get more krud every day and the good stuff (usually little emerging developers) are getting really hard to find. I don't necessarily agree with some of the names mentioned by it's usually an individual developer or small team that really comes up with something fascinating ... so here's the top secret e-mail ... Naah ... not here :) Honestly think Louis and Robert have it right on this. If you REALLY want to, or need to get to the 'meat', publish your cell number?? - Charlie Anzman

? I'm not even in this thread, down boy. - Prokofy Neva

It's nearly time to take a little nap until morning, so I'll leave you with one more thought. Robert is spot on with his complaint/comment/feeling that he's constantly being pulled in many directions. When the grappling hooks from companies, PR pro's and journalists get so demanding that he has to make a decision, try to think where you (in his shoes) would focus your energy. I know I would block the companies and the PR folks and go with the writers who genuinely see a story and are going after it. - Jeff Cutler

I'm not arguing that PR can become a bummer when it's in such massive numbers, but I do think there is a bright side to the madness. The bright side being that, if you're receiving hundreds and hundreds of e-mails from PR people, you have MADE it! Haha, you know? It's a real marker of your status, almost to the point that it should be regarded with gratefulness. - Andrew Dobrow

PS: Seriously don't think calling out people one-by-one will do anything at all (filters? :) - Charlie Anzman

social media has become all about filtering. Problem is too much time is spent filtering now... scoble and others don't want to spend that much time filtering PR pitches to find the ones that are actually valuable. PR people don't want to spend the time filtering through blogs to find ones that matter to them. and now, average joe doesn't want to have to filter through the our back and forth on this topic on twitter, so here we all are on FF... I need a second brain for all this filtering. - adam christensen

The "create interesting experiences" concept definitely hits home, but it takes more resources than most have. Sun can get Neil Young, I can use some tricks to get A or B or C, but for the little guy it should be about persistence and creativity. - Andrew Feinberg

The problem is bad pr firms and others that send mass mailout to every possible email address for a given domain, the best way to deal with those is to firewall the offending ISP or offending country. Small well targeted email runs atleast don't become a nightmare for ISP's. - paul

the problem is the email platform is being abused so much that it is almost impossible for it to be taken seriously, anyone should ignore any email from any company that ask you for your personal details or login information. - paul

So my post was more of a rant than I was hoping for and I never really got to my point which is, cant we please give this a rest on the weekend, I dont want to have to avoid Twitter and the computer in order to not have to feel like me and my profession are getting kicked in the teeth again. I just want to be on to have some good conversations, and this isnt one of them - the PR bashing is exhausting, and it takes a toll every time I see another Tweet come across about it. - Lisa

OK can I make a small confession? I threatened my PR agency that I wouldn't pay their invoice until they both got onto Twitter and tweeted for 7 days straight and Followed at least 50 people. They basically said I was acting immature and I backed down because I was! Just goes to show you what Twitter-addiction will do to you. I love them both and they are my peeps but for the life of me I just cannot talk them into getting onto Twitter! End confession. - Elliott Ng

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