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Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble
I was just thinking about the contest I held earlier this week. Only about 1,500 comments came in, while I have 30,000+ followers on friendfeed and 70,000+ on Twitter. Why such low numbers of participants? What do you think about these low rates of engagement?
March 19 - Comment - Share
Stale followers? People who join sites like Twitter, FF, and other socnets and then drop off in usage, yet remain subscribed to you? Would be neat to be able to sort your follower list by last posted date and then trim off the inactive users. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Scoble you're just another billboard on the freeway. - rob friedman
Well...I only happened to catch the contest due to the live streaming FF sidebar. If not for that, and seeing lots of people comment about it, I might have missed it altogether! lol - Carlton Hackett
I think most people don't hang out here all the time, and it just gets lost in the noise. - Christian Burns
Sounds about right to me, if you read the studies on engagement. 80% lurk. Also, after reading through about half the comments on that thread, part of me felt guilty about leaving one myself. I wanted to start handing out my own money to people in need. - Karoli
contest? what contest? - americanm
What was the entry mode? Was it 'x words or less'? That can knock down the numbers sometimes. - GadgetGuy
they have yet to discover FF? - Alfredo from fftogo
americanm: I gave away $5,500 on Monday to friendfeeders. - Robert Scoble
Contest, meh.... - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
Also, it probably flew by on Twitter...and retweets get annoying enough that folks ignore them, too. That comment strand was so long it crashed my phone every time I'd try to load the page. - Karoli
What! $5.500! too bad I was working :S - americanm
everyone is marketing and no one is "following" and Twitter is peaking and getting filled with crap and crap users. When freakin David Gregory is giggling like a schoolgirl (this morning) on the Today show..."I'm twittering! It's so addictive!" the floodgates have opened and the game has changed. - Steve Averill
i follow you on both twitter and friendfeed, but i didn't comment about the contest. - Varun Shenoy
The contest was here: http://friendfeed.com/e... - Robert Scoble
It's the lurk factor. Very few of those followers will be reading you on a regular basis, they're likely to just catch up everynow and then. A 5% participation from your FF followers is actually pretty good. - Rachel Clarke
I can't remember the last time I had an engaging conversation on twitter. Here on FF is a lot different (and more interesting). I get crickets when I post over on Twitter these days. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
May be not everyone has such a good reason for the USD1400.00 as I do. As they think you will award me with the money so they just plain given up participating. - Vinko
Actually with the new FF notifier I seem to engage in more discusions - americanm
Pavel, I already did, but here it is again: http://friendfeed.com/e... - Robert Scoble
who won? and btw, that's 1,499 more comments than i've gotten this week ;-) - Andy Sternberg
You gave it worthy people. Obama is going to give me a check for $8000 next year because we just bought a house. - Christian Burns
Andy: the winners were announced here: http://friendfeed.com/e... -- by the way, if you won and I haven't heard from you yet, send me email to scobleizer@gmail.com -- I'm taking care of that stuff next week. - Robert Scoble
I saw it, read it and thought it was great. The sheer numbers of comments was a disincentive to add further comments - why repeat what has already been said many times already? - WorldofHiglet
I almost didn't participate. I thought the chances of winning would be too low as you have a lot of followers and so would get tens of thousands of comments. I ended up doing it as you never know when luck may favor you but the fact that there were only 3 (i think) prizes to be won amongst so many potential contestants may have put off a lot of people from trying. - kunal jain
WorldofHiglet: because I gave away $1000 to just a random person chosen from the comments. - Robert Scoble
Seems an easy enough entry mode - perhaps the casual nature of the competition made it seem 'less authentic'? Other than that, would you classify the reaction as your regular level of engagement via this channel? - GadgetGuy
kunal: why do so many play the lottery or go to casinos then? ;-) - Robert Scoble
Yes, but the chances of it being me were v small, and why would I deserve it more than others? - WorldofHiglet
I'm tryin to Give away $100,000/Year for 4 EZ $20 Sales + Folks seem to be asleep at the switch!! Good News is we're Bumping dat UP to $500,000/month on just 2 EZ $20 Sales!! ;)) - Billy Warhol
GadgetGuy: it's the #2 most commented on post ever here on friendfeed, so for friendfeed it was actually pretty cool. I just wonder about how many people are actually using these services vs. just registered. - Robert Scoble
Robert. if the contest had some kind of polling, some kind of question, something more than just leave a comment for the sake of winning, I would have participated. - Kiran Patchigolla
I couldn't take money from you. If the contest was by a faceless corporation, then maybe. - Morton Fox
They didn't need the money? :) - Grant Bierman
Well, I definitely want to participate in your next contest. Hope I catch it. - Ted Beam
@Robert Scoble - I should have paid attention... saw your link and removed my unnecessary now question - Pavel Senko
And yes, I realised it was random but I was vaguely discomforted by the idea of getting money for nothing from a man who friended me over the Internet. - WorldofHiglet
Sounds about right - I did a poll today on twitter that just said: Reply if you see this - got 4 out of 730. thats .5%. You had a contest which likely got RT to a larger group but still had 2%. I think 1% would be a fair assessment of the penetration of any given random tweet. If that 1% RT it, it can climb. Do you read even 1% of the traffic on your timeline?I don't think I do. I can't read 1% of the stuff in google reader anymore. I barely read 1% of my email (thanks to spam and other filters). - Ben Shoemate
Robert, I think that part of the problem is that twitter and friendfeed end up fragmenting people attention so you get larger numbers but the connection is much thinner. As a reader I really miss the Robert Scoble with the long posts. I like how Fred Wilson has incrementally evolved his blog into something like blog+forum...that seems to be the best of both world and help really create a great sense of community. Same thing with Seth Godin (although he is more of a one way street). Good luck with Building43 - Edwin Khodabakchian
I read it, and "liked it" but I didn't post because (while money is nice) you have already given me enough. - J. Abdul-Qahhar
Ben: good point! - Robert Scoble
I don't do lottery but wish I did because it's only a $1 to dream. With your competition I didn't realise for ages that I had to comment to be eligible somehow. (I know that sounds .. err.. dumb) and then it had the feel of a marketing survey or something. What was I letting myself in for ? Finally it clicked. Oh ! I see and then I happily commented and checked on tuesday's results to see if had won. Nice selection of winners I thought ! - Julian Edward
This whole thing demonstrates how hard it is to get people to comment or like or take action. - Robert Scoble
how about doing a contest where you randomly choose a person who "liked" something of your's? - rob friedman from IM
Karoli's on to it re. the demographic that was aware but didn't jump in. I think there was a feeling of incongruance between the "DSLR camera upgrade" and "purely altruistic cause" all jumbling together (of course there were mixed bag ones like mine too). This issue doesn't come into play in most traditional contests/raffles b/c they are depersonalized in nature. - Micah Wittman
I missed it. Must not have been online at the time. :-( - ursi
I dunno....this post has got 45 comments in 13 mins - WorldofHiglet
I just saw this post by pure chance. But with so many people participating, its enough to only catch 1% - you still get a pretty diverse group. - Ben Shoemate
disagree with whoever suggested less of a connection. I've gotten more attention on Twitter and FF from Scoble than I ever got leaving a comment on his blog...and by the way, Robert...I'm offering to serve as your personal tweet valet for any upcoming conferences you might be attending...especially in the Bay Area...hmmmm? - Karoli
I think there's something in that Robert, plus I of all these 'socnet' things, FriendFeed can seem a little Byzantine. Wonder how it would compare putting the same thing on just your blog/website? - GadgetGuy
I follow you on twitter and ff, saw the comp, just didn't enter. Maybe as I get to know you better I'll be more open to taking your free cash. - Justin
Karoli: that might be fun! :-) - Robert Scoble
GadgetGuy: I would get far fewer comments if I tried this on my blog. It's too hard to comment on a blog anymore when compared to friendfeed. - Robert Scoble
People comment only when the topic is relevant to them. But even if a person finds a topic relevant, he may not comment. There can be multiple reasons. May be he doesn't want to associate himself to the topic or do not like to reveal his identity - John Samuel
About 5 months ago we have been giving away $10,000 every week to individual who submitted best post to our site. We've also spent a lot to advrtise - you would be surprised to know the ratio... people, basically were thinking it's a scam. - Pavel Senko
People may think to not bother because they think they may not win anything - Outsanity
Robert: Have iPhone, will travel. Trying to get to the Web 2.0 Expo...trying to sweet-talk Rob into letting me be your personal Tweeter. :) - Karoli
Fewer comments - yes, definitely. But I'm suggesting if was dressed up as a 'normal' website competition that people would perhaps be more amenable to entry. - GadgetGuy
too much info going by too fast maybe? Hard to keep up. Another issue is so many ppl that have done these contests get a bunch of spam after they tend to avoid them. Mine was the first case as during the day (when you probably sent the first word about it) I am sooo slammed at work i barely have 10 minutes at lunch to check out twitter and fb. I'm trying to do more but right now my time is late eves. I'll check it out now Robert. ...................ok, nm. I see it's over. I would have done for money - Robb Lewis
I just had a larger response on Facebook to a question I posed than I did on Twitter and FriendFeed. I do think there is some fatigue setting in. - Jesse Stay
Jesse, but isn't your focus and entrepreneur/developer/author status re. Facebook make Facebook expectantly dominant for you? - Micah Wittman
In your situation, you were giving away MONEY! Who wouldn't take 5 seconds to participate in it? My thoughts: a combination of too little time for people to participate (I know you had it open for a few days, but a whole week and constant RT's by you would have made a big difference), people knowing that the chances of winning were quite slim, and most importantly: why RT something if the chances of you winning would go down? You would make people comment on it and make the chances of you winning decrease! - Michael Forian
Does that "90-9-1 UGC" ratio apply here? 90% read or lurk, 9% comment and participate, 1% (i.e. you) create? - .LAG liked that
ya those metrics are stuck until ppl figure out how to use the information the best for them - rob friedman from IM
Robert: with all due respect. I think that you are wrong about comments/blog. Here is the proof http://www.avc.com/a_vc... - Edwin Khodabakchian
Jason, one could argue that Robert (or anyone in his scenario) changing his MO _only_ because the wind changes direction, that that would amount to a devalued Robert Scoble the public figure (value as it relates to his partners, financial supporters and to his friends/audience at large). - Micah Wittman
... MO meaning: He experiments. Talks about the process. Shares what he learned. Iterates (and the latency has lowered over time, the impact of which is anyone's guess). Some conclusions are drawn from aggregating information in threads like the very one we're all reading and/or participating in here. - Micah Wittman
I think the time frame was to small. If the contest lasted for a week I think the results would've been different. - Andy Gongea
Micah: It's a rough economy and Robert was able to acquire a new employer. Good for him. Robert's new employer recruited him to promote their brand. Makes sense. They leveraged SXSW and the crowds for the announcement. That's smart. What value did the giveaway add? With FriendFeed as the mothership, Facebook and Twitter users around the world received: "You've won two free iPods!" - Jason Nelson
Edwin: Just read through the comments on the post you linked. Two thoughts raced through at the same time: 1) only one commenter was a woman, yet there are many women qualified to comment on this topic; and 2) the discussion there seems to have engaged members of a long-standing community. What doesn't appear to happen? People joining the conversation or giving that post attention who are not already following Fred Wilson's blog. This is what Twitter/FF do. Also.. (cont) - Karoli
Stale accounts. How many people hold memberships at a gym or tickets for symphony vs how many of those people actually work-out regularly or attend the concerts? BTW--did I win..? :-) - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
Edwin, continued...Robert's observation that even with the high ratio of followers on FF and Twitter, the number actively participating was less raises the question of how to measure lurkers in an attention economy. The metric cannot simply be the number of comments, or number of clicks. - Karoli
If 25% saw your post and 10% of that responded, it seems reasonable. ~ 100,000*(0.25)*(0.10) = 2,500 - Bruck Sewnet
What about self-selection? I knew about it, but didn't participate because a) I had little hope statistically of winning b) I found all the wheedling comments (Friendfeeding frenzy?) unedifying and didn't want to be part of them c) I knew there were many people who deserved to win much more than me anyway - Tim Ostler
Robert: I saw you post when you just posted it but I choose not to enter the two sections for this reason: 1) The Random Choice: I am very hesitant to enter these things because of the stigmatism around greed and cash grabs. I'm all for free money, but the second I put my name on the list, I participated, in public (just my stigmatism). 2) The Reason: I am relatively secure with few pressures. I know of many more people more deserving than me who would use it to benefit others. - Johnny Worthington
Your contest was great, but just not for me :D - Johnny Worthington
I'm with Tim on this one. Self selection probably played a fairly big role. I opted out for much the same reasons, with (a) being significantly reinforced by several thousand miles of Atlantic ocean. - Andy Kruger
@Karoli The point I was trying to raise is that both robert and fred are building communities. Fred does it with Blog+Disqus+Twitter, Robert does increasingly with Friendfeed + video + fewer blog posts. Each community have different scale, depth and engagement characteristics to them. - Edwin Khodabakchian
Jason: Value: 1) We're talking about it (70+ comments later). 2) He made a point about giving this particular chunk of $4500 away as a symbol of the personal enrichment he received in doing the video piece. 3) The winners or their beneficiaries were tangibly helped. 4) Like I said before,(technologically mediated) social experimentation that reasonably retained Scoble's own stamp on it. ~~~ I'm not a big fan of contests in general, but this had tie-ins to the world in which I am interested. - Micah Wittman
Edwin, agreed...but the broadcast factor to the greater Friendfeed/Twitter community is a way to increase engagement. Then there is the mashup of a blog with a twitter posting/filter focus, like we've got on our Health crisis blog (ushealthcrisis.com) with the JustSignal tool, and what could also be done with the Friendfeed widget. Blog, Twitter, FF dialogues in one place...the possibilities boggle the mind. - Karoli
Robert, Sometimes even free money is too expensive for some folk ... perhaps if you offered to pay them to take your money it may work! Seriously though, besides the likely 80% lurk factor, your experiment also illustrates that a lot of people are lazy (i.e. they "Follow the Path of Least Resistance" and move on with one more click) and just can't be bothered. The exception to this fact would be if you were to market to a more motivated audience, say in Nigeria! - no offense to Dare - who simply rocks! - Alexander Ainslie
I saw the original announcement on friendfeed. I have had problems finding a way to work twitter and friendfeed back in my life and haven't for a while. Tweetdeck seems to be solving some of the problem. But the days where I had a constant stream running down a sidebar on googlechat are over. At that point twitter seemed like a vital force. I have a much smaller stream on Friendfeed but ignored it for a long time and just hung out on Facebook. I seem to be heading back to twitter and friendfeed now. - Aidan Mann
Some of us didn't want to win and didn't participate. I saw it and let it go. - Louis Gray
re:the filtering by recently active followers, TweepSearch.com mostly has all the pieces in place to do something like that, main problem for @dacort currently seems to be the server loads that come with staying on top of the massive indexing tasks (for a small outfit). In other news, 5% "conversion" (1,500 of 30,000) ain't half bad. IM "industry" average conversion assumption is ~1% (granted for paid-for items, not contests, but even entering costs time/attention). - Alex Schleber
..If I were you Robert I'd introduce a bit more of a challenge element into it, people tend to love a (not too hard) challenge. Otherwise it may just be too blah... - Alex Schleber
i think like because with blog feedburner counters, it does not mean eveyone is actually following you + there is a time shift thing. the sense of real time does not apply everywhere in the world - Ouriel Ohayon
I am presuming you are referring to your giving away money competition. I didn't participate on principle. There are needy people out there who deserve it more than me. - Parth Awasthi
I think people have been scammed enough and are Wary of *FREE* Money ... I know your intentions are true and very generous on your part . But I think there are many people that would shy away from an offer like this .. Im glad the people that took part in this needed the money and were helped . - johnpiercy
Well, people are different... Some of us do not participate in contests of different reasons. We have different value systems despite of increasing globalization. One cannot draw any valid conclusions and categorize people on the basis of single experiment. - Hanna Wiszniewska
Dear Robert. That low engagement is the reason I've deleted my twitter account. Massive growth, but engagement is at an all time low across the board. Summer's coming, and the recession is making sure people are more workaholic in nature. - Richard A.
1. could be that many of your readers are from overseas (like me) and did not think we would be eligible... 2. not everyone reads every post in detail... some are just glimpsed over... (like i did for this post) 3. not all members are active followers... 4. not all members are active participants (even though they are active followers) - simran
I don't claim to know how all the different disincentives factor in to the final engagement percentage, but I do have a guess as to why people shy away from the random chance. They can see the stack of comments. If the store had a stack of lottery tickets showing your chance of winning few would play. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo
I don't play lotteries, and I also didn't feel this was aimed at me. I imagine many felt the same way. In addition, people are really NOT rollowing each other's every word on these services. "following" is a euphemism for checking in every now and then. - Francine Hardaway from twhirl
It was the #2 commented post? Which post got more comments than free money? - DGentry
hi richard, "the taking it so personal" is what can make trouble in social network, we have just to keep in mind that it is a tool, no more and as a tool the engagement isn't required, the more people will see as a narssisic tool the more the tool will be useful. - abdellah
That's why I gave up on twitter. If it's a tool then it's worthless. - Richard A.
what "beyond a tool" is your twitter vision? - abdellah
The more people think of websites as a tool the less will they are to spend hours on it. I thought of twitter as a lifestyle and it showed in the way I used it. After too many people used it as a tool it become unpersonal, hence worthless. Why expect an answer that will come 6hrs later for example. - Richard A.
even blog are tools, every mechanism that human use to communicaye ideas is a tool, making it personal is just a way to express a hidden affection to that too with encapsulate the easiness of that tool in a other words the usability of the tool. - abdellah
Of course they're tools, but the difference is that the experience from blogs and friendfeed is much richer. You get pictures, you get links, you get real depth to every single post. With twitter it's just 140 characters, very vague. As a result of it's vagueness you want to engage with people more, to understand - Richard A.
@Robert because we overestimate "engagement". There is little engagement on Friendfeed or Twitter. They are mainly channels for publication and status messages. Engagement comes from the 1% that engages anywhere. That is why Jason Calacanis's post about the value of Twitter suggested users makes no sense to me. It is old-school eyeballs thinking. The value of having many followers is probably 1-1 comparable to traffic and display ads on the web. - Alexander van Elsas
I will go with Alexander on this one. - Prakash
Most people are not as hyper-engaged. They sign up, drop off, maybe come back a month later, maybe not. Do crazy things like go out of town and not check in on the web while their gone, except for their myspace page. Plus some people are allergic to money. - Thomas Hawk
I get offers for free money in my email box all the time and totally ignore at least half of those. - Thomas Hawk
FF and Twitter are not for catching up, they're for looking at what is going on right now. You only posted in that thread a couple of times, so the odds were not that great that the thread popped to the top of everyone's feed. I know I NEVER go back and see what's going on, it's all I can do to keep up with what is happening now. FF doesn't need me meddling in things I wasn't here for. - Matthew DeVries
Matthew's point is critical --- the single biggest limitation of these powerful new channels (e.g. FF & Twitter) is the ephemeral nature of the post. The most inane along with the most salient both float away with equal speed on the tide of fresh fed content. - Thom Kennon
@Brian: "Would be neat to be able to sort your follower list by last posted date and then trim off the inactive users." - I'm working on a service that does exactly that... - Holger Eilhard
Say your giving away $100,000. If I were a betting man I'd say you'd get few more comments... - Francois
I follow a lot of people and join a lot of social networking sites at someone's recommendation (like I heard about FriendFeed and I signed up), but I don't always go back and check regularly. Stuff like Twitter and I'm new to FriendFeed so I don't quite know how it works, but so much stuff comes in from all the followers, and I don't try to scroll down and page back to read everything. I guess this stuff would be more effective if you just used it among a few friends who you really care about. - Auriette Lindsey
I'm probably not the only one conditioned to ignore posts like your contest thread. I scanned it in passing, but thought it was primarily intended for people who "deserved" the money. IIRC, there were half a dozen different threads from you about the contenst, when you were giving the money away, the fact that it was going to be live on ustream, the fact it was really Ciscos money... honestly it started to seem like spam to me. - Ken Sheppardson
...It was also right after that guy with the Tesla and the two dogs who doesn't blog anymore (yeah, I know his name) was offering to give away money to Twitter and getting a bunch of free advertising from it, and maybe it was all just too closely related in my mind for some reason. - Ken Sheppardson
Also, 1500 comments from 30,000 followers strikes me pretty consistent with a power law distribution (long tail) on participation, which seems to apply to just about everything online. - Ken Sheppardson
Think I'm in with @cogarch. Just skimming existing comments made my head spin. And while I'm surely not wiping my a** with USDs, someone else needs that money more than I. - Keith McCammon
my reason? you're a bit too prolific, Robert. I've had to start mentally filtering you out as noise (sometimes). no offense meant, not trying to pick a fight. :) I filter lots of people. I only follow 230 people on twitter and *2* on friendfeed. I'm too busy at work every day to keep up with even those numbers. Of course, with friendfeed's model, i get *plenty* of updates by just following Scoble. - Rob Shields from twhirl
oops. my last sentence was meant to say i get updates from Scobles friends, too, which is a great source of info. wasn't a final parting shot at Scoble's number of updates. - Rob Shields from twhirl
I think that is an amazing number of participants. That is over 1% of your total followers (there is a lot of crossover between your FF and twitter followers) and you are lucky to get 1% to be active in your communities. Most users are incredibly passive. - Daniel Zarick
I'd guess that A LOT of users aren't 'every day' or even 'every week' and just missed it. - Charlie Anzman
1% engagement, that's not so good, not when you consider the ease of interaction f the medium. It shows go for a small audience, but an active one. Go for the niche, it's no longer about broadcasting. - Richard A.
there was a contest? - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ
followers, you know, are not a correct attention metric :D - giuseppe
You are just a person that doesn't want a lot of distractions, I get it, but why do you have to tell (Robert Scoble)? Why not just filter and keep it to yourself?? Just wondering. - T.S. Elliott
@Robert, Jason's post and you starting this discussions give me the feeling that Friendfeed and Twitter do not provide more engagement, they provide eyeballs. That is very web 1.0 ;-) : http://vanelsas.wordpress.com/2009... - Alexander van Elsas
it got lost in all your other tweets and friendfeed posts so I missed it - Joe Breen from twhirl
The majority of people on these networks are passive users. It's like seeing a stat that you may only get comments from 2% of people for a blog... Lots of people like to read, very few like to interact. - Michael
All $$ talk aside, this is great example of why #'s of followers in either service don't necessarily mean what most think it means. It also demonstrates the relative real-time factor of FF, in which followers would need to be using the service at the same time the post is made (+- a few days depending on the size of interactivity) or those other people never see it. - Josh Haley
Statistically, your reach sounds okay. Perhaps you thought you'd have more comments because it was a contest - hmm - no, it wasn't really like a casino - I think if you had indicated that it would really be "random" and not only for the most "deserved" you'd have had more comments. It does take up more time to make up something to sound like I deserve something - not too many would gamble if the luck factor wasn't so strong there - Maya
Because I didn't find it all that interesting? *grin* Nothing personal, Robert? I knew it was going on, but it was pretty gimmicky. I tend not to do gimmicky. - Ken Kennedy
Not everyone uses FFholic, Robert... ;) - Jordi Soler from twhirl
Knowing how large your following is, I'm reluctant to join the noise. (most of the time.) - Michael Markman
WHO has time to be on here 24/7? I don't. Bread on the table before playtime. ;-) What was the contest?? - David Slater from twhirl
David S. :-), that's why friendfeed is a million times better than twitter. Here you have pictures, video, long replies to read and more. Perfect :-). - Richard A.
Richard A I still can't sit here all day waiting for the ULTIMATE QUESTION, ready with my answer of 42! ;-0 Wish I could make a living blogging, but I can't! Now if I had a 4K laser in my house, I could make some money! - David Slater from twhirl
Robert, actually that 1500+ is quite great result as many wouldn't get close to that amount of real replies to competitions without large amount of advertising/etc. - Daniel Schildt
well, robert, was waiting for something @ ;) - bob phillips
For me it was just time, i saw the post and then like 30 minutes later there were winners announced. Maybe a bigger delay between begining or end? Or maybe I just missed the post initially. Still great job. - Steve C
I didn't even see it for some reason. - Hans Eisenman
so many possible reasons. a) no one cared. b) no one saw it. just because your follower count is X does not mean X people saw your update and actively decided against "engaging." start with the assumption that the vast majority of your network misses the vast majority of what you say - @baratunde from twhirl
pride? - Kevin Fox
Well maybe they follow you, but they don't trust you so much to engage in a contest with real money, even if they have nothing to do but commenting :) - Napolux from twhirl
I'm going with Kevin's comment....pride. - Hutch Carpenter
i didnt see it, until later - Deb
Deb's comment is very telling - You have a fantastic management system for dealing with all the data. Most users on twitter don't. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Recently I helped start #iestories on Twitter. We managed to get it to catch on and it trended into the top 5 according to search.twitter.com Even though it was a humorous meme (humor FTW) and a technical topic to a relatively technical crowd, it took A LOT of work to get it to trend. I posted once every few minutes for a few hours with the hashtag. My conclusion is it takes that much fanning to get the flame to start. - Paul Reynolds
The paradox is you blow out people's timelines that are cautious followers and accept you as a few people they follow. So getting something to trend across all of your followers requires you to be annoying enough to where you will lose some quality followers. [unrelated: FF's comment link doesn't scale well with 100+ comment posts!!] - Paul Reynolds
Maybe next time you ask people to nominate charities to give the money to? - Paul Bainbridge
@Scobleizer I saw the announcement retweeted it and then left a comment so that others may participate – I agree with the first part of what Louis Gray had to say, but I did participate. - Kevin Tunis
People seem to me to be skeptical of contests, in general - I think. The idea that Paul Bainbridge has - to nominate charities to give contest money to is a really good one to consider. Here's something else ... consider the idea of giving away a trip to SXSW next year, with the opportunity to meet you, and possibly spend a little bit of time talking with you, personally. Your wife will LOVE that one ... NOT! Being from an entirely different industry (catering & special events), for me, it would be a blast! - Carlo At Your Service