Live.Awake » Random Thoughts

Follower Ratio Idiocy Will Kill Twitter

Ben — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:11:29 +0000

Yeah, maybe I’m stating that title a little strongly. Maybe so. But if it doesn’t kill Twitter, it is certainly going to decrease it’s value to the social web world. This much I am sure of.

If you’ve been happily living unaware of what a “follower ratio” is, allow me to briefly explain. Many people in the twitterverse these days proclaim that if your ratio of people following you vs. people you are following is really far apart then this says some bad things about you. At the very least, it’s bad form, bad manners, and communicates that you do not care about listening to others and only care about others listening to you. You are a broadcaster, not a social media participant. You are an irresponsible netizen.

Hogwash.

This is precisely the reason why your list of “friends” on Facebook means nothing now. This is why Facebook had to create a “hide” feature in your feed so you could hide away friends that you don’t like without actually having the unfriend them. That’s silly.

One of the primary ways that you find other interesting people to follow on Twitter is through the Following list belonging to the people that you already follow. The assumption is, “If I am following you, you are probably following some people that I would find interesting.” So you check out their list and follow some of them. This is one of the primary ways that Twitter grows and spreads.

Now, if you put pressure on twitter users to follow those that follow them then you automatically begin decreasing the value and authenticity of their list of followed users. It ceases to mean anything to them. It ceases to mean anything to everyone. Soon, Twitter will have to invent ways to unfollow people without actually unfollowing them just like Facebook has done. Again, that’s silly.

Does anyone actually believe that a human being can keep up with more than 100 active people at a time on Twitter? Sure. Create your lists, Tweetdeck filters, and all that jazz. Go ahead. You still won’t follow that many people. You will have the list that you follow that filters out the people you don’t care about, while everyone else gets relegated to a column off-screen somewhere. You’ve in effect unfollowed people without actually unfollowing them and now your “following” list means about as much as your Facebook “friends” list does right now. Just a hair more than nothing.

Stop the madness. Only follow people you care about and don’t follow more people than you can realistically keep up with. Don’t be silly, and don’t succumb to the pressure to make social media socially shallow. It doesn’t have to be, but it will be if you start following people that you could care less about.

Recently, several people I know have told me that they are quitting twitter, or have just stopped using it because the people they follow say annoying things. This is a symptom of what I’m talking about here.

As for me, I will only follow people that interest me or that I know personally, offline. If that means you won’t follow me, then so be it. At least you will be able to look at who I am following and know that every person on that list has some significance to me. You will also know that if I follow you, I will actually read what you say and not drop you in a filtered column of purgatory off -screen. I currently follow a little over 200 people on twitter. Only 75 – 100 of those are active at all. Very few of the remaining ones tweet every day.

What are your thoughts? Am I right on this one?

Bobby McFerrin and Richard Bona Improvisation

Ben — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:35:17 +0000

Many don’t know that there’s a lot more to Bobby McFerrin than “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”.Â A lot.Â Not only can he sing well, he uses his voice like an instrument (lots of them, sometimes playing all at one time).Â This is skat singing x 100.Â This is true, live, improv.Â Awesome.

And, of course, Richard Bona is incredible as well.Â Enjoy.

The audio and video is a little out of sync, sorry… I didn’t make the video.

Islam Will Not Be Pacified

Ben — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 20:16:17 +0000

What Do You Think?Â Are Westerners Still Naive? While I don’t think we should be suprised by these comments, I find it disturbing that (in my perception) most of my neighbors and certainly much of our political system seems to think that Islam just needs to be pacified, coddled, and sweet-talked.Â Does this guy sound like he wants to cuddle to you?

From the video’s description: “this is not a Jihadists from Iran but a professor from Kuwait – a country with every reason to be grateful to the USA for liberating it from the tyranny of Saddam Husseins invasion.”

Link to video

Bring on the comments!

Random Thoughts

Ben — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:39:22 +0000

i haven’t done a “random thoughts” post in a long time. My thoughts are always pretty random, but I can usually wrangle some of them into a cohesive post. Not so today. It’s my day off and while I blissfully ignore the ringing phone and a stacked inbox, I’m going to hit you with the unfiltered madness of my disorganized mind.

What’s the deal with social networking? Why do I not care? Am I not post-modern enough or something? I don’t do Twitter, and don’t have any desire to add another “social” networking annoyance to my life. I have a MySpace profile and never look at it. I have a Facebook profile, and while I enjoy getting “poked” as much as the next guy, I never poke back. I’m not even sure I understand Facebook. Everything seems so disorganized on the page. It just makes me feel old, so I avoid it. Am I the only one?
My “Why I’m Mad at Miley Cyrus” post got a lot of heat. I’m thinking I should do a few more like it. Why I’m Mad at Josh Groban. Why I’m Mad at Wayne Newton. Why I’m Mad at The Geico Caveman and the Green Smart Alick Gecko. If you are mad at someone and would like me to rant in your place, let me know.
I finally finished Tim Keller’s new book The Reason for God. Great book. I think his tone in the book was as instructive as the content. He really succeeded in laying out some uncompromising arguments while at the same time not alienating readers that are not coming from a Christian context. So many apologetics books that I have come across have an adversarial tone. They put unbelievers and doubters on the “other team” and try to out argue them like a lawyer in a court. Dr. Keller’s book avoids this nicely.
Heather was out of town for two days this week and took the girls with her. That left me with my 1 year old son and no girls. We watched Dirty Jobs, ate pizza on the floor in our sweatpants, wrestled ( I let him win), made silly faces, and made “man noises”. It was awesome.
My wife saved my hide again this week. Thursday there was a prayer service outside the town hall here. I didn’t have any responsibility in the service and I figured there would be a lot of people there. So, I was about to leave the house in a t-shirt and some old pants. My plan was to go, stand in the back and then leave. Heather stopped me before leaving and asked “Are you going to wear that?” I’m not an idiot. I know how to respond to that question. I said, “No, no, no. Of course not. What do YOU think I should wear. I can’t decide.” She dressed me properly. I show up at the town hall, I end up on stage praying at the last minute. That gets recorded by the local news and broadcast that night. And I matched. Thanks, Heather!

Weekend Thoughts

Ben — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:10:50 +0000

After some last minute haggling over flooring this week, we are going forward with the sale of our house. We close on Feb. 11 and move on the 9th. Not much time to pack!

Here are some randomly collected thoughts and links to get your weekend started.

Time gave Scientology what-for this week. I don’t know why I’m so fascinated with Scientology. I think it may be the fact that it is so off the wall and yet so many adhere to it. Though it’s not that different from some of the healing “ministries” I’ve seen on TV…
John Piper posted a response to “A Common Word Between Us and You“.

For those unfamiliar with “A Common Word,” it’s a letter written to Christians by 138 Muslim scholars last October saying that love for God and love for neighbor is common ground between Christianity and Islam. The response from the Christian leaders, which John Piper finds disappointing, was published the following month.

Go check out the video.
I finally saw Cloverfield this week. I enjoyed it (as did my brother). Though, I’m not one of those people that needs a movie to end with all questions answered. The movie was definitely different. I was surprised that they stuck to the first person point of view the entire movie.
Last, but not least… Weird Al. I’ve been a fan since the late 80′s. No one does a parody like him. This is one of my favorites.

[tags]Weird Al Yancovich, funny, youtube, you tube, Scientology, John Piper[/tags]

Free At Last

Ben — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:16:15 +0000

I don’t have much time to post today because we are trying to get ready for the inspection Monday, finish a sermon and start packing. I thought I would show you this image I came across this week.

I think it’s pretty awesome. (Click the pic to enlarge)

Have you ever felt this way?

Have a Great Weekend!

Weekend Thoughts

Ben — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:16:14 +0000

It looks like we may get some snow this weekend! It seems like the Raleigh, NC forecasters always get it wrong, but this time it looks like they may be right.

Some important MySpace news you may not be aware of. There is a backdoor vulnerability that allows anyone to use a specially constructed URL to access the photo gallery of private profiles on MySpace. Underage users are being specifically targetted (yuck…). If you have an underage user (under the age of 16) with photos in their gallery, I advise you to shut down the profile until MySpace fixes the problem. At least remove the pictures. The story from Wired News says that there are sites popping up right now that allow anyone to enter a MySpace user id number and then view their gallery. Creepy. Stay informed, parents!
I discovered a cool blog this week. If you are at all involved in maintaining your church’s website, I strongly suggest checking out “Heal Your Church’s Website“. He gives good practical advice with a sense of humor. He also regularly takes a look at particularly bad church sites and does (respectful) reviews of them with comments open. Cool stuff.

I’ve reached Zen status as a geek. Our desktop computer crashed this week and I didn’t have a valid copy of Windoze to put back on it. So I installed Ubuntu Linux on it without a hitch. It’s liberating to be free from Microsoft. Heather was totally unimpressed (except for the “this is free” part), but thankfully I still have a few geek friends who are impressed. ;-)
The house selling saga continues… Still no action on the contingency buyer’s house, but we do have some real interest from someone who looked at our house this week. The word is that if they do make an offer, they will want to move in TWO WEEKS. Yikes.
Here’s a really cool video that will be hard for me to convince you to watch, but you should. They excavated a massive ant colony after filling it with concrete. It’s amazing. Check it out.

[tags]youtube, ants, you tube, MySpace, security, ubuntu, linux, church websites[/tags]